Volume 56, Number 14 · September 24, 2009
The Glimmerglass 'Traviata'
By Geoffrey O'Brien
La Traviata
an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, directed by Jonathan Miller
at Glimmerglass Opera, Cooperstown, New York, July 18–August 25, 2009
Anachronism has become almost irresistible for opera directors. The violence of transposition—Rameau's Platée in a Village bar, Così fan tutte in a postmodern suburb, Wagner's Nibelungs in what might pass for a nineteenth-century sewage system, the Scottish Highlanders of Rossini's La Donna del Lago diverted to the cracked cement playground of some abandoned inner-city neighborhood—seems the quickest and surest way to defamiliarize and thereby force new attention. Operas, it is thought, need to be regularly wrenched out of their inherited frame of reference to avoid taking on the fossilized predictability of a coronation or an alumni reunion. Only by cutting it loose from its historical moorings, as so many directors think, can an opera escape the curse of the museum or waxworks and form fresh and perhaps jarring associations in the perpetual present that is its real home. Such at least is the theory, generally decried by those who prefer their operas to be little changed or fear their being pitched into settings that undermine both the music and the motives of the composers and librettists.
Review, 1896 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |