A traviata that wanted to shock the viewer, and so was the one that staged a transgender version of Violetta Valery at the Ponchielli last night. The director’s notes by Luca Baracchini already indicated his intention to reread Piave’s libretto, set to music by Giuseppe Verdi, “to make the armchair a little more uncomfortable. I wish we were no longer content with a rhetorical and morally accommodating epilogue in which a redeemed “Magdalene” ascends to heaven as a humble virgin.
More applause than boos (albeit very loud) from the audience for this very modern version, co-produced by the Theaters of OperaLombardia and the Fondazione Rete Lirica delle Marche, which is a bit risqué at some points as in the Danza delle Zingarelle set in a set is disco, where the party has become a “bondage” party with masks and whips. A provocative version of the work that achieved its goal of making the public think about gender issues.
Apart from the boos from the purists, at the end there was applause for both the production and the actors (in the roles of Violetta Francesca Sassu and Cristin Arsenova), as well as for the chorus of Opera Lombardia, conducted by Massimo Fiocchi Malaspina, and for the orchestra the Pomeriggi Musicali Milan.
On the other hand, Baracchini himself explains the meaning of this staging in the director’s notes: “If Traviata lives today as it did a hundred and seventy years ago, whoever sees her must experience the contradiction between a prejudice that accompanies her and one that lays her down naked in front of man. There is nothing edifying or romantic about final death, only a cruel and devastating mirror; there is no bourgeois drama of common morality, but an intimate tragedy of man “sick” of prejudice until he forms his own opinion. Violetta does not die proud of her identity but embodies that sterile and hypocritical expectation that has ruined her existence; she longs, but does not fight, she almost seems to be looking for a deserved martyrdom to redeem her from her guilt. You decide, dear spectator, whether there is a mistake or just a prejudice that sits in our armchair”.
The score was also revised by the conductor Enrico Lombardi. Lombardi compares well-known arias such as “Amami, Alfredo” or “Libiamo ne’ felici calici” with the incipits of literary works such as the Divine Comedy or I Promessi Sposti and decides “to really illuminate the many details, the small precious writings – or if they so to speak, the “colors” – of this big whole. And perhaps we could discover that, contrary to what is usually said, La traviata is not only “known” but can also be (re)studied”.
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