"La Traviata' by Opera New Jersey

Wonder of wonders:
A Traviata that seems new

JIM RUTTER

How many times in a season can opera companies count on their patrons to see Verdi’s La Traviata? A better question: How can a production continue to entice viewers to see such an oft-performed work?

In its fifth season, Opera New Jersey has found an answer in the kind of small interpretation that elevates a well-sung production into a magical evening of opera.

La Traviata recounts the story of the passionate yet doomed love affair between the tubercular former courtesan Violetta and the young nobleman Alfredo Germont. “Nothing in the world matters but pleasure,” is Violetta’s mantra; "Nothing matters unless you know true love,” is Alfredo's reply, and we’ve heard it a dozen times before.

But Opera New Jersey’s director John Hoomes chooses to focus on a minor medical triviality: Tubercular patients often suffer raging fevers that (quite literally) cook their brains and induce vivid dreams and hallucinations. Thus during the overture, we see Violetta (Elizabeth Caballero) lying on a table in her salon, where she awakes to lighting (by Barry Steele) that bathes her face in a glow. Confused, she rises and inspects the lighting fixtures and walls to see what’s real, almost as if to say, “Pinch me.” That twist was sufficient to keep me wondering whether she’d still die in the final act, like every previous Violetta I’ve seen.

From this one simple device, which recontextualizes the entire opera, the story now becomes a fevered dream— either looking backward or as a hallucinatory experience itself. This is an awesome interpretation that enhances the tragedy by adding a dimension of mourning regret. And from a tale of harsh realism— she’s dying of TB in either case— Hoomes constructs La Traviata as a beautiful, intoxicating nightmare.

A dream rudely interrupted

The remainder of the production stays true to the plot of Francesco Maria Piave’s libretto about an initially unlikely pair of lovers. Gradually, the hedonistic courtesan finds herself seduced by the romantic ideals of a dashing suitor, and they experience months of bliss in the countryside. But even here, Hoomes’s framing device intensifies the story, rendering all of love (“the heartbeat of the universe”) into a dream— which ends abruptly when Alfredo’s dad (William Andrew Stuckey) shows up and demands that Violetta stop seeing his son, as their affair now threatens his daughter’s chance at a respectable marriage. Truly a reformed courtesan, she agrees to do the right thing, sending Alfredo (Michael Fabiano) down a path of jealous revenge, and hastening her disease’s progression.

Fabiano reprises his role from the Academy of Vocal Arts spring production, though Richard Seger’s much more spacious (and more elegant) mirrored and brass-fixtured set gives Fabiano a chance to use his height and good looks to dominate the stage. Since he wears tails throughout, it’s much easier to see why Violetta would trade her older, wealthier admirers for this young hottie who promises endless happiness with his smile. And Stuckey’s deep voice as Germont displays a clear and pleasing tonal character.

Though Caballero sounds a bit Carmen-esque, lounging her way through her coloratura passages, she displays a gorgeous voice otherwise. Moreover, she skillfully articulates Hoomes’s thoughtful staging. After hearing Alfredo’s proposal to give up her hard-partying ways and run off with him, she pauses for about 30 seconds while drinking a full glass of champagne, indulging in one last gesture of her current lifestyle before smashing the glass against the floor.

A tragedy for the audience, too

I could have done without some of Hoomes’s directorial choices. While I enjoyed Mary Pat Robertson’s tango choreography for the gypsy and matador dance that opens Act Three, I found myself agreeing with the chorus when they sang, “We don’t need such a display, let’s just enjoy the party.”

Though I’ve seen this Verdi opera twice in the past two months, here I enjoyed it with the sensation of seeing something new. Hoomes’s small framing device transformed La Traviata from a borderline melodrama back into a real tragedy. When Alfredo finally returns to Violetta— now on her deathbed— her 11th-hour pleas against death find an answer: Not only life but this wondrous dream she’s been having must end. For those of us in the audience, the tragedy is that we rarely experience life so richly concentrated outside of the theater, or beyond the fevered remembrance of a dream.