A double première

Yesterday finally was the day: we would watch the live performance of Verdi’s La Traviata in the Metropolitan Opera House sitting in a tiny cinema in Chalon. De show ran at the big auditorium, with a balcony, hence we looked straight into the stage of the Met.
This was the very first time I saw La Traviata in a modern “timeless” setting. And that was not disappointing. I am not terribly impressed by two singing Negros with ghetto blasters on their shoulders prancing through a Mozart opera. I would also not be impressed by Porgy and Bess being performed by an all white crew, hence I think there is nothing wrong showing La Traviata in mid 19th century costumes and scenery. But actually I have to admit that the semi-circular stage with a continous bench along the edge, with as the only requisites a huge clock and a number of Ikea-sofas, grew on me during the performance. As a matter of fact, I thought it was very effective indeed in the last act. The music was fantastic, the sound in the cinema was superb and the high definition projection was crystal-clear. In the mean time I have found out that this “Live at the Met” service is available in other countries as well. In the UK one can watch “Live at the Met” even in Llandudno!

Next years program did not really appeal to me, but those who loved the film “The Lord of the Ring” will certainly drool watching Wagner’s complete “Ring der Nibelungen” with plenty of Teutonic violence, gigantic scenery and big quantities of warriors with swords and spears. The preview we saw was very similar to the preview of I once saw of “The Lord of the Ring”.
And the second première? When we wanted to turn into the path to our house, we caught a young wild boar crossing the road in our headlights. And then you realize that you do not have your camera with you...

A confession

I have a confession to make: I really do like opera. Actually, I should rephrase this: I really do like ONE opera.
And that one opera turns out to be Verdi’s “La Traviata”. How come just this one opera? Well, that is quite a story on its own.

It all started in the early seventies with a set of three LP’s, which I received from a Russian woman in a sort of present-exchange program. The Beatles album “Let it be” was shipped off to the Soviet Union, and in return I received “La Traviata” in Russian, packed in a typical Melodia luxury edition. I was soon taken in by the wonderful music, but although I studied a bit of Russian in those days, I still needed an excerpt of the story from an opera book to understand what the story was about.
Anyway, I loved the music, whether the singers were performing in Russian or not.
A couple of years later I saw “La Traviata” on TV, in Italian and with subtitles, and since that day I was completely hooked on that particular opera. In the meantime I had also read Dumas fils’ “La Dame aux Camélias”.

A bit later, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, several quite good ex-Eastern block opera troupes started touring the west, and that is how I saw my first “live” performance of “La Traviata” by a Polish troupe.
Just loving one opera sounds a bit meagre for any real opera buff, hence I tried to widen my perspective a bit. But what to choose? “La Bohème” I knew from TV, as I did “Madame Butterfly”. “Die Zauberflöte”, “Così Fan Tutte”, Le Nozze di Figaro” and “Carmen” were very accessible, but I would classify those as light operas. Wagner was discarded as politically incorrect, but maybe Tchaikovsky was a good alternative. Not only did I like him as a composer, I also did like Pushkin’s work. So I did try to watch “The Queen of Spades” and “Eugen Onegin”, but no matter how I liked the stories, the operas as such were too heavy for my taste.

Since then I restrict myself to the lighter Mozart operas, Bizet’s Carmen, and of course the opera with which it al started.
It is anybody’s guess of which opera I have a copy on DVD, and not just for show; it is indeed viewed regularly...

Now how did this story pop up in my litttle brain? The film “The Artist” was showing in a village centre nearby, but we could not make it there because we had other obligations that evening. After searching on the internet for some time, I found that “The Artist” was running in cinema Axel in Chalon-sur-Saône. We jumped in the car one late afternoon, parked on the edge of town and walked towards the cinema. The film turned out to be worth each one of the 30 km we had to drive to see it. After the show I was browsing through some brochures, and I found one which stated that regularly live performances of operas running at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York were shown in this cinema.

My curiosity was aroused, and the very last opera announced in the brochure was ... “La Traviata”, showing 14 April live from New York, hopefully with American subtitles...

For our own website click here.