Opera Philadelphia’s ‘La Traviata’

Audiences may not tire of Traviata — just as, say, they don’t tire of Beethoven’s Fifth — but directors and producers, bored by the same old same old, search constantly for ways to update the great old operas (not to mention Shakespeare). Five years ago, Opera Philadelphia’s predecessor company staged Traviata not in the buttoned-up Victorian 1850s but in the Roaring ’20s, that liberated age of jazz, gangsters, and bathtub gin. The same company’s current production sets Traviata in Paris in the late 1950s — “the last real era close enough to our own,” director Paul Curran contends, when a sex scandal might have seemed “relevant or even dangerous.” In this conception, at least on opening night last Friday, Violetta’s formal party in Act I brilliantly (albeit unintentionally) prolonged the real black-tie gala dinner that the opera company’s well-heeled patrons had just attended in a tent set up on Broad Street outside the Academy of Music.

If Trump is forgiven. . . .

But here’s the hitch: As with so many beloved 19th-century operas, the conflicts and tragedies in La Traviata hinge largely on the sort of misunderstandings that could have been cleared up easily if only the characters possessed telephones or email, not to mention access to antibiotics, a good shrink, or an interactive website. Violetta’s lover Alfredo, with his handsome face and lofty ideals, might have seemed credibly attractive in the 1850s, but in the materialistic 1950s his utter lack of marketable skills would have driven women in the opposite direction. (As portrayed by tenor Alek Shrader, Alfredo’s prime talents appear to be moping, gambling, and tennis; he expresses joy by swinging his racquet periodically. Unfortunately for Alfredo’s earning prospects, even in the 1950s tennis was still primarily an amateur sport.)

Traviata concerns the sacrifices that an individual — in this case Violetta, a woman with a libertine past who finds true love for the first time just before death — must make for the greater good of the social order. With Traviata, Verdi spoke to his own times, reminding his contemporaries that an ostensibly civilized society is worthless without compassion and forgiveness. That’s still a valid message, to be sure, but (thanks in part to Verdi) by the 1950s it had become pretty obvious in the Western world, and it’s damn near unnecessary in a sexually liberated 21st-century society like ours, where pop songs constantly remind us that love is all you need, where out-of-wedlock childbirth is the norm, and where a twice-divorced presidential candidate is not only forgiven but also embraced by many religious conservatives.

Opera’s weakest role

These logical inconsistencies undermine the emotional power of what is otherwise a first-rate performance by Opera Philadelphia. As Violetta, soprano Lisette Oropesa reveals herself as an actress of beauty, personal magnetism, and a confident voice — credibly hitting the emotional extremes from party girl to bedridden consumptive, and also hitting the high note at the end of Act I that the great Licia Albanese often avoided. In “Dite alla giovine,” Oropesa’s heart-wrenching Act II duet with Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont, she begins in a whisper, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Baritone Stephen Powell as Germont makes the best of one of the juiciest cameo roles in opera, and Alek Shrader as Alfredo does what he can with what is probably one of the weakest roles in opera (even wimpier than Don José in Carmen, who at least held down a full-time job).

Gary McCann provides an elaborate set, especially in the opening party scene, with a grand staircase, grand piano, and half a dozen chandeliers. In both party scenes, director Curran provides plenty of movement among his singers and dancers to appeal to the eye as well as the ear — maybe a little too much movement. (Or are you excited by the sight of women jumping on a piano, men removing their shirts, and Alfredo being inexplicably hoisted aloft by his fellow male revelers?)

Next stop: Tehran?

One minor quibble: The curtain was inexplicably delayed at the end of Acts III and IV, leaving the performers stranded on stage for a few awkward seconds of silence. Especially in the final act, that descending curtain should play a critical role, punctuating the finality of Violetta’s life as she collapses on the floor.

The veteran conductor Corrado Rovaris, who by now must have Traviata coming out of his whatever (as Donald Trump would put it), reliably reminded us that Verdi’s music, even more so than the Alexandre Dumas novel on which the opera is based, remains the critical element that immortalized the otherwise obscure story of Alphonsine Plessis, a real Parisian courtesan who died of consumption in the 1840s at the age of 23.

How, then, can a director render La Traviata relevant in 2015? I would present it just as Verdi intended in 1853. In effect, the message would be: Behold the social injustices our ancestors endured in order to produce the relatively liberated society that we enjoy today. And behold the bright new singers filling roles that were created more than a century before they were born.

Better still: Set Traviata in a modern society that isn’t so liberated — Saudi Arabia, say, or the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Even better: Produce Traviata in Tehran or Pyongyang. Then you’d have an opera that’s every bit as daring as Traviata at its premiere in Venice in 1853. And you’d appreciate how much courage it took to stage it, once upon a time.