The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the novel and play 'La Dame aux camélias' by Alexandre Dumas Jr. La Traviata is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi. “I love the singing of this wonderful Violetta. It’s gold standard,” Mandelson told Reuters amid the bow-tie and evening dress-clad crowd during the interval. The first-night audience included Italian head of state Giorgio Napolitano, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and British politician Peter Mandelson. “To set side by side the repertoire and the modern day is the Scala’s mission, not repeating the same show as the conservatives would like,” Stephane Lissner, outgoing artistic director of La Scala, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, defending the current production.Ĭonductor Gatti dedicated the evening to Nelson Mandela and held a minute’s silence in the lavish auditorium for the “extraordinary man” who was South Africa’s first black president and who died on Thursday. “La Traviata”, set in 18th-century Paris, has been part of performance schedules worldwide more than any other opera over the last five seasons, according to. “But when they rolled back the rock, it was a Frankenstein monster. “After so many years of non-Italian opening nights - Wagner, Bizet and more Wagner - and especially after ‘Lohengrin’ greeted Verdi’s bicentennial birth year at last year’s opening, Scala finally welcomed its native son back to the fold, with arms wide open, regardless of Wagner transgressions,” blogger “Opera Chic”, who specialises in La Scala productions, wrote. “A triumph for Violetta and catcalls for the director,” the Italian newspaper La Stampa said in the headline of its review.

Such innovations did not sit well with some of the formal-dress audience who had paid as much as 2,000 euros ($2,700) per ticket for the 2014 season opening night. The modern-dress production of Verdi’s tear-jerker about a courtesan who dies of consumption after sacrificing her love of a young man for the sake of his family had a starry cast - German soprano Diana Damrau as the doomed Violetta and Italian opera specialist Daniele Gatti conducting.īut the production also featured touches like Violetta swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whisky and one of her lady friends wearing a Native American-style headdress.

La traviata verdi opera completa