Sydney: Traviata as a spectacle for opera retards: trash
I need another Traviata like I need a hole in the head, but I love all the previous opera australia blu-ray issues so much that I couldn't pass on this one. I watched it last week and was so disgusted I gave up after one act. I wasn't going to write a review because there are more important things in life than to trash a Traviata that a lot of people seem to like. There are a lot of people who like Andrea Bocelli; there are a lot of people who like what other people consider trash. It's one thing to engage in opera wars on a closed internet forum, but I wasn't going to get into that in an amazon review. However, seeing the 5 star orgy other reviewers engage in I have to speak up. Let me just describe what you get (in act I). It's an amplified outdoor event with everyone wearing huge body mics (not discreet ones). The singers are directed to run around so much that they get a good aerobic work-out. It affects their performance in different ways. They have to concentrate differently...
Parma: A Traviata so sad you can't even cry
This Parma 2007 production is by Mr. and Mrs. Karl-Ernst and Ursel Herrmann, who are among the founding fathers of the German regietheater. The German Directors conceived it in the early `90s but this is their first work in Italy. The set and costumes (also by Karl-Ernst Herrmann) are traditional, and their approach to the drama is now becoming traditional, in that other directors borrow from their ideas and their depiction of Violetta.
The action takes place in mid-nineteenth-century Paris, planted firmly in the hedonistic demimonde, with its gambling, high spending and sexual promiscuity. Act I takes place in a richly upholstered dinning room with a domed ceiling and a rich chandelier. During the prelude there are six men in the room. Violetta is lying on the dinning room table, her beautiful legs in black stockings, caressed by two men, dancing with a third, etc. Once one of them leaves money bills on the fireplace mantle for services rendered you realize that they are...
The OperaDou Jury* "enthralled" by the Sydney "La Traviata"
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