Hope for love

by Petar PLAMENOV

26 August (Friday), 2011

Opera Festival in Bansko
Central Square "Vaptsarov"
Bansko
Free Entrance

CAST: Tsvetelina Maldzhanska (as Violetta)
Bozidar Nikolov (as Alfred)
Niko Isakov (as George  Germont)

Conductor Deyan Pavlov

The passion and tragedy of the story of Violetta and Alfredo is still powerful enough to inspire the soul.
The original masterpiece, based on La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas fils, fell foul of the Venetian censors when it was first performed in 1853. The Italian composer GiuseppeVerdi became renowned for highlighting the iniquities of polite society at the time – and the story of a high-class ‘pleasure girl’ who finds love, only for it to be torn from her grasp by that same self-serving aristocracy, was deemed too close to the bone. In its first performance, the censors forced Verdi to set the opera in the early 1700s, rather than in contemporary Paris.

The story is as much about death – of the soul as well as in its literal sense – as it is about love, and the set reflects this throughout the three-act show.

Act 1 opens at a party for Violetta, who has recovered her health after being struck down by consumption. While the dress of the party guests is flamboyant, the black curtains draped over the scene provide a sense of impending doom for the hostess.

While Violetta joins her guests in celebrating the pursuit of pleasure, there is no question that her soul is dark… empty. Only too well proved when the doting Alfredo Germont pledges his love to her – an emotion she has never experienced and now fears, knowing the disease she had battled may return at any time.



There is hope though, as the set changes to reveal their blissful life living together. Alfredo cannot contain his passion for the woman he has found – and saved – and Violetta rejoices in the certainty that love can exist for her. But the black curtains remain, as a reminder that the shadow remains over their lives – only to become worse and more oppresive as the story continues. It is well to remember that this is Verdi’s only opera that is entirely set indoors, accentuating the claustrophobia the shadow gives.

And the hopes are dashed as it emerges that Alfredo cannot financially support their life together. When his father Giorgio arrives and demands Violetta renounce her love for the sake of his family’s honour, the tragedy begins to unfurl.

Violetta leaves and returns to her old life, pretending to herself that out of love for Alfredo she has done the right thing by him. Cursed, she is confronted by her true love at a party who throws back the money he has raised to support her in her face and challenges the passionless Baron Douphol to a duel.

Inevitably, the final act sees Violetta consumed by her illness – close to death. The black shroud of her life is finally closing in around her, and she can only try to hang on for one last moment with Alfredo.

He returns, finally, along with his father who is broken with remorse at the way he has destroyed their dreams. But it is all too late – the fallen woman, who was briefly shown the heights of love and tenderness, cannot be saved even by that love.

The story of the fallen woman has been replayed many times in art and opera itself, but here Verdi seek true power of drama in the sense of personal dignity and fragility of life.
 

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