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Also this issue: Popular Mechanics Etching for Glory Kick Out the Jams National Showcase of New Plays Dueling Media |
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June 20-26, 2002
artpicks
When Verdi wrote La Traviata in 1851, scandalized censors wouldn't allow performances in the contemporary setting he specified. Based on an actual Parisian courtesan made famous by Dumas' play Lady of the Camellias, the story of the Lost Girl destroyed by disease and bourgeois hypocrisy even as she finds True Love proved too raw and too critical of societal values. For the Opera Festival of New Jersey, director Renaud Doucet and designer André Barbe transpose the action (Provincial Nice Young Man Alfredo loves Urbane Woman with a Past Violetta until Stuffy Dad breaks it up) to the alcohol-soaked Roaring '20s, when excess reigned anew.
This staging marks the first casting as Violetta for the promising young Puerto Rican soprano Yali-Marie Williams, a Curtis Institute graduate. Tenor Marc Hervieux has sung the passionate if clueless Alfredo in his native Québec; this is his U.S. debut. Philly native Christopher Robertson, a stalwart Met baritone who opens next season at Milan's La Scala (a major prestige gig) sings Papa Germont. The expert Joseph Rescigno conducts some of opera's most accessible and touching music.
OFNJ performs in the McCarter Theatre (the magnificent castle towering above Princeton's Dinky train station). If you drive, an early dinner in New Hope/Lambertville plus an opera in Princeton makes a classic "one-evening vacation."
La Traviata, opens Sat., June 22, through July 13, $22-$82, Opera Festival of New Jersey, McCarter Theatre, Princeton, N.J., 609-258-2787, www.operafest.org.
