News

11.02.2020

25 years of La traviata

“Dear Emanuele, La traviata last night was a failure. Was the fault mine or the singers?... Time will tell,” wrote Giuseppe Verdi to his friend Emanuele Muzio the day after the première. It is hard to imagine today that one of Verdi’s most popular works, which is now part of the repertoire of almost every opera house in the world, was poorly received by the audience at its first performance. But history has proved many times over that first impressions are often false. So it was with La traviata, which is now one of the most frequently performed operas of all time.

La traviata also occupies an important place in the Mikhailovsky Theatre’s repertoire, and 24 February will see the 25th anniversary of our production. First staged by Stanislav Gaudasinsky in 1995, it has remained untouched by time or fashion. Verdi’s masterpiece has now played to full houses in our theatre for a quarter of a century.

The première of La traviata in Venice on 6 March 1853 is known to have been unsuccessful in part because the composer had not taken the audience back to a past age, as was the custom at the time, but was instead telling a story about his contemporaries. The audience was not prepared for such frankness, and in subsequent performances the artists dressed in old-fashioned costumes to appease theatregoers’ tastes. Like their counterparts 150 years ago, today’s audiences enjoy being transported into the past along with the characters in the opera, which is set in a period that is now quite far removed from our own. The sets for our production, reflecting nineteenth-century Parisian fashion, were created by Vyacheslav Okunev, who was awarded the title of People’s Artist of Russia in 2011.

In the first performances of our production in 1995, the part of Giorgio Germont was sung by another People’s Artist of Russia, Nikolay Kopylov, who still frequently performs the role.

The opera’s principal character, Violetta Valéry, is one of the most charming and powerful female roles in world opera and one of the most sought-after parts for sopranos. “Violetta is a complex character who you could work on forever,” says Honoured Artist of Russia Natalia Mironova, who has sung the role of La traviata at the Mikhailovsky herself since 1997. “Every performance reveals something new about the role.” The prototype for Violetta was the courtesan Marie Duplessis, a woman whose life was colourful but short. Numerous men worshipped her for her intelligence, refined taste, and beauty, including not only Alexandre Dumas himself, but also Franz Liszt. The stage setting for our production seems to reflect the heroine’s inner world, eschewing schmaltzy sentimentality: for all the magnificence of the interior, the set’s subdued tones speak of the tragic fate of the mistress of the house.

The 245th performance of our production of La traviata will take place on 22 February. It can also be seen on 20 March and 23 May.