Met Opera: Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata
$32.50+
Three captivating sopranos with many previous triumphs to their names – Nadine Sierra, Ermonela Jaho, and Angel Blue – star as the self-sacrificing courtesan Violetta, one of opera's ultimate heroines. Tenors Stephen Costello, Ismael Jordi (in his Met debut), and Dmytro Popov share the role of her self-centered lover Alfredo, alongside baritones Luca Salsi, Amartuvshin Enkhbat (another debut), and Artur Ruciński as his disapproving father. Michael Mayer's vibrant production also features three maestros: Daniele Callegari, Marco Armiliato, and Nicola Luisotti.
In a remarkable career spanning six decades in the theater, Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) composed 26 operas, at least half of which are at the core of today's repertoire. Francesco Maria Piave (1810–76) was Verdi's librettist during his productive middle period, and also worked with him on Ernani, Macbeth, Rigoletto, and La Forza del Destino, among others. Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–95) was the son of the author of The Three Musketeers. The play La Dame aux Camélias is based on his own semi-autobiographical novel of the same name.
Verdi’s musical-dramatic ability to portray the individual in a marginalized relationship to society keeps this work a mainstay on the world's stages. The vocal and emotional scope of the title character is enormous – from her Act I show-stopper aria "Sempre libera degg'io" to the haunting regret of "Addio, del passato" in Act III to the extended Act II confrontation with her lover's father, Germont.