SFO Streams First-Rate Verdi Production

The opening scene of La traviata (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

The final January Opera is ON video stream presented by the San Francisco Opera (SFO) served up one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most popular achievements. Indeed, La traviata has been in the SFO repertoire since it was first performed in the company’s second season in October of 1924. Frank Zamacona produced his video when this opera was staged in the War Memorial Opera House in the spring of 2014. By that time the staging by John Copley was familiar to SFO audiences, since it was first performed in the fall of 1987. This particular revival was staged by Laurie Feldman. Casting featured soprano Nicole Cabell in the title role of the courtesan Violetta Valéry, tenor Stephen Costello as her lover, Alfredo Germont, and baritone Vladimir Stoyanov as Alfredo’s father Giorgio. The conductor was Nicola Luisotti.

While this may be grand opera at its grandest, Zamacona’s video direction used close-ups the capture the full intimacy of the relationships among the three leading characters. Given the scale of the Opera House itself, there is always the risk that getting too close runs the risk of distorting the visual impact. However, through Feldman’s direction, it was clear that Cabell, Costello, and Stoyanova had all mastered the subtle details of the characters they had to develop. Thus, however familiar this opera may have been to almost everyone viewing it, this video account provided an opportunity to appreciate a depth of character that is rarely grasped from the extended distance from seat to stage.

To some extent this attention to detail also reached down into the orchestra pit. Both the first and third acts have extended preludes (both working with roughly the same thematic material but in different narratological contexts). Through this video one could appreciate how Luisotti evoked just as much subtlety as could be found in behavior of the characters on the stage. There were slow pans across the orchestra pit, but the preludes were at their most interesting when one could observe the precision behind Luisotti’s efforts to set the mood for what was about to unfold on stage.

Because this opera is so popular, it runs the risk that regular opera-goers often approach a performance with a here-we-go-again disposition. Between Luisotti in the pit and Feldman’s realization of Copley’s efforts on the stage, both enhanced through Zamacona’s video capture, the attentive viewer never felt that this was “just another” Verdi staging. Indeed, this was a production in which such viewers could experience an intimate relationship with both the music and the staging; and when “grand opera” is at its “grandest,” such occasions are rare indeed.