La Traviata - Los Angeles Opera - Review

The power of "La Traviata" as an opera rests in the power of the music that plays like an intro to ghostly elements. The prelude that settles over the audience is like a mist of lost souls that seems to billow and wretch so you can feel the love that could have been but never stood a chance. The melody highlights the beauty and romance that acts as a mask over the more compelling and practical element of futility that purveys over the characters of Violetta and Alfredo.Inside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Downtown LA, the final performance of the LA Opera's 2008-2009 season returns to tradition but one most welcome. The paradox is in the parallel in that the creative director of the company Placido Domingo, once played the lovesick Alfredo in the film version made in 1983 by Franco Zeffirelli. This production was also directed by Marta Domingo, his wife, who was herself once a leading soprano, as well as designed by her.The aspect that seemed to define most other versions of "La Traviata" was the worldly element in which it showed the wilting flower of Violetta cast against an organic setting. Here Domingo does something interesting (which was also apparently in her original production): the staging especially in the latter half of the production has an exceptionally gothic feel. The second part of the second act begins this transition with the hall of Flora's party which, bathed in blood reds and shadowy bordellos, portrays the decadence of the high class lifestyle of the day which is a comparison that many young people could possibly see in their own lives and icons of today.It is all about making the modern back then seem new to now which Marta as a designer seems to do with gusto. The aspect of the dancing girls done in more of a burlesque environment than a stripper basis brings this emphasis home. Cards are played and then the hot celeb of the evening, a Spanish bullfighter, comes in and dances upping the energy of the entire proceedings. This is when the opera seems to come fully alive. The tension between Violetta and Alfredo is mounting at this point because of a previous scene where Alfredo's father tells her to abandon his son because it will hurt the family's standing. But the moment with the Spanish dance pinnacles a dreamlike state. It makes a connection to both young and old which is the key. As with "Die Walkure", the Domingos are trying to push the modern interpretation of opera while still maintaining a traditional foothold which I agree shouldn't be lost.The first act of the opera set during Violetta's party is familiar but allows the audience to assimilate into the aspect of her lifestyle and at least a periphery view of her illness. The beginning is a dance meant to draw the audience in. The first half of the second act is engineered to set up the conflict. However this is where the opera is most weak. However it is buoyed by the visceral and connective performance of Polish baritone Andrzej Dobber who is utterly convincing and musically precise as Georgio, the father of Alfredo who faces off at times in a musical volley battle of sorts with Marina Poplavskaya, the female soprano who plays Violetta. Poplavskaya can bring her lyrical cries of resistance to a whisper which serves her exceptionally well in the final act.The 3rd Act is aware of what it is but creates an exceptional mood heightened by the use of a screen which gives the appearance of a unclear dream. The music is slow but deliberate accentuating the inevitability of what is to come. The starkness of the set suggests an almost Burtonesque texture as the vices of fire and death rage behind leading into a Greek finish that is much more dynamic than other productions. Marta Domingo surely knows how to drive an audience and, in the best intensity, was able to create a pinnacle in the second act to reset the peroformance for the final curtain and not necessarily resolution. The key to "Traviata" is realizing how futile the exercise is in terms of the love portrayed and that the participants in whatever age they live are doomed to make the same mistakes in perpetuity forever.The closing selection of LA Opera season is a traditional one but done in an exceptional way. It gives a modern visionary take that will both appeal to the artistic balance of an older crowd but impress and inspired young audience with its references to the coolness of the era and what it offered to the young, powerful and cool. A cross generational inkling of an age old opera is a wonderful thing to behold with the 2nd half of the 2nd act offering a visceral and rich highlight to an age old conflict: star crossed lovers who never stood a chance.