La traviata by Verdi, No (2021/2022), Režisēja Éva Gy Tatár, Annamária Gombár, Diriģents Szabolcs Kulcsar, Katalin G. Incze, Gergő Nagy, Opera Maghiară, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Between 1847 and 1852, Giuseppe Verdi spent a long time in Paris, where he most likely saw Alexandre Dumas' freshly presented piece, The Lady of the Camellias (La dame aux camélias). With the opera written from the play, Traviata, Verdi stepped out of a world of pure historical dramas like The Troubadour and approached what we might call social realism — although “society” in this case means the top ten thousand. The opera was commissioned by the La Fenice Theater in Venice, but the story of family strife and love afflicted by fatal illness inevitably challenged the hostile temper of conservative censors. However, thanks to the excellent connections of the most famous Venetian theater, the authorities finally made one major change: the story had to be moved from the present to 1700. Today, Traviata is Verdi's most performed and most recorded opera. Its charm, like all of Verdi's mature works, is due in part to the musical quality of the important melodies: Violetta's soprano, Alfredo's tenor and Germont's baritone can be a sure guarantee of fame. Because he wants to achieve the greatest possible emotional impact without impact hunting, Traviata is the opera best suited to turn the uninitiated into Verdi fans. That's what Maestro might have thought when, a few years later, when asked which of his operas he likes best, he replied, "Rigolett as a professional and Traviata as an amateur." The composer is one of a select few, Mozart, Wagner and Puccini: he has at least a dozen works on stage at all times. The reason can be summed up in two words: drama and melody. Philosopher Isaiah Berlin, a spiritual historian, summed up Verdi's magic: “The noble, simple, unbroken, natural creative and organizing Verdi is the voice of a world that no longer exists. It is so popular today for both the educated and the simplest audience because it expressed eternal emotional and conscious content in the most direct way - as did Homer, Shakespeare, Ibsen and Tolstoy. ”