Last Night: Verdi's La Traviata at the War Memorial Opera House
| Chris Hardy |
| Ailyn Pérez as Violetta Valéry |
It figures, doesn't it, that it was Rhett Butler -- that manliest of men -- who opined that reputation is something people with courage can do without. Change "people" to "men," add italics for emphasis, and you'd have the take-away lesson from Verdi's La Traviata. (That, and young soprano Ailyn Pérez is brilliant -- more on that shortly.) Its heroine -- one of the more fully realized female roles in traditional opera -- is hardly lacking in courage. But when reputation is reducible to sexual purity, and that purity or its lack determines your place in the world, reputation suddenly seems tyrannical rather than dispensable.
The plot, as my date for the evening observed, falls into the time-honored camp of "let's kick this [lady] around for three acts and then watch her die." Violetta Valéry, a Paris courtesan with one hell of a bad cough, accepts the romantic advances of upper-crusty Alfredo Germont, and all is dandy until papa Giorgio Germont shows up to remind Violetta that she is -- how to put this politely -- a whore. Angst and noble self-effacing gestures ensue, the cough gets worse, and by the time Germont père comes round to the notion that whores are, like, people too, Violetta's on her deathbed. Uplifting stuff.





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