Lyric Opera 2018-2019 Issue 9 La Traviata

D I R E C T O R ' S N O T E | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O 34 | February 16 - March 22, 2019 Prior to the premiere of Arin Arbus’s production of La traviata in 2013, she spoke with Lyric’s director of media relations, Magda Krance. (Edited by Lyric dramaturg Roger Pines.) How have you immersed yourself in the story, the music, and the backstory of La traviata ? I read the Dumas fils novel and play to understand the source material. I also read about Marie Duplessis, the courtesan Dumas fils fell in love with, who was the inspiration for his novel. Because the opera rests so deeply upon 19th-century bourgeois concepts of morality, it’s important to gain an understanding of the values of the world that Verdi is depicting, as well as the life and trade of a Parisian courtesan of the period. ere really isn’t an equivalent in our time – certainly it’s very different from our contemporary understanding of prostitution. What draws you to this opera? I’m drawn to the incredible music. I love Violetta’s fierce thirst for life in the face of death, her self-loathing, her loneliness, the wild parties. I’m also interested in the politics the opera contains. One must remember La traviata scandalized the censors when it was written. Verdi wrote about the hypocrisies of the society in which he was living. As much as the opera is a deeply drawn psychological portrait of a woman struggling to love and survive, it’s a social critique. e story depicts a woman destroyed by a brutal and petty world. e love which Violetta and Alfredo create together is a kind of rebellion against that world. How do you keep the opera’s timeliness/ timelessness without transposing it into a current setting? For me, it’s not the setting that makes something relevant. I’ve seen many plays, operas, films set in our contemporary world that have little relevance or power, just as I have seen many period pieces that speak to me directly and feel of the moment. e period is just the surface. In this case, the immediacy of the music, the characters, their situations and the passion expressed within the opera remain vital and relevant. e opera exists in its own time, but speaks to us of now. We have set this production in the 19th-century because the dramaturgy rests so deeply upon 19th-century bourgeois concepts of morality. And because the life and trade of a Parisian courtesan were so specific. Violetta’s shame and her precarious financial situation are rooted in the values of her time and sit at the crux of the tragedy. How do you envision the chorus’s role? In a certain sense La traviata is a story about profane love. Germont reveals the values of the world Alfredo rebels against, while the chorus represents the society from which Violetta attempts to escape. Germont has conventional, rigid ideas about right and wrong. He values appearances and reputation more than love or happiness. is is a world which Verdi knew well. Years after his wife and children had died, Verdi endured admonishments for living outside of marriage with the renown soprano Giuseppina Strepponi. In an extraordinary letter to his former father-in-law, Verdi wrote what Violetta does not say to Germont: “I am not accustomed to interfere in other people’s business, because I demand that no one interfere in mine.... In my house there lives a free, independent lady who loves seclusion as I do.... Neither she nor I owe any account of our action to anyone. Who knows whether she is my wife or not? And who knows in this special case what our thoughts and reasons are for not making it public? Who knows whether this is good or bad? Why might it not be a good thing? And even if it were bad, who has the right to hurl the ban against us?" e chorus embodies the “teeming desert of Paris.” It’s a stratified and monied sphere, filled with courtesans who are briefly kept by upper class and aristocratic patrons until they are discarded, often to destitution. In e Lady of the Camellias , upon which the opera is based, Dumas fils writes: “[Courtesans of Paris] are suns which set as they rose, unobserved. eir death, when they die young, is heard of by all their lovers at the same moment, for in Paris almost all the lovers of a well-known woman are friends. A few recollections are exchanged, and everybody's life goes on as if the incident had never occurred, without so much as a tear.... one has friends only when one is perfectly well.” What are the inspirations for the visual world you’re creating with your collaborators? Here are some images that come to mind: a frail girl putting on a big dress, damask wallpaper, a man in a woman’s wig, bulls, skeletons, Spanish lace, iridescent bird wings, matadors, colored paper lanterns, dancing shadows, Ingmar Bergman’s figures on the horizon from e Seventh Seal , pastel colored cakes, carnival parades, 19th-century Parisian interiors, daguerreotypes, white plaster walls, confetti.... A Conversation with the Director e enraged Alfredo (Joseph Calleja) throws his winnings from gambling at Violetta (Marina Rebeka) in Arin Arbus’s production of La traviata at Lyric, 2013/14 season. TODD ROSENBERG