Zeffirelli’s first Traviata at Arena di Verona Opening of the 2019 Opera Festival

[ From category News ] [ Subcategory Arena din Verona ] [ Article date: 2019-03-18 ] [ From city Verona ] [ Country Italia ]   Zeffirelli, the last great Master of Italian direction, with a new production that takes the form of the ultimate synthesis of his aesthetic thoughts on the beloved and frequently directed Traviata Two long-lasting loves finally meet: La Traviata and Arena di Verona. La Traviata is definitely one of the operas on which Zeffirelli has worked most frequently in his lengthy career as a director, scenographer and costume designer, since far-off 1958, when he faced it for the first time in Dallas with Maria Callas, measuring himself at a very young age with his artistic father Visconti, who had just directed it in the very famous production at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala; Zeffirelli is also well-known for his very close ties with Verona, where he gave his personal touch to the restyling of Piazza Bra, and above all with the Arena, in whose immense and magniloquent spaces, he produced unforgettable performances of Carmen, Aida, Il Trovatore, Turandot, Madama Butterfly, Don Giovanni and now, at last, the eagerly awaited Traviata. Eagerly awaited not only because with this opera the artist wrote, designed and directed a real milestone of the genre, the 1983 cinematographic Traviata that left a profound mark on the history of opera on the big screen, but also because all the Traviatas by Zeffirelli have always enchanted international audiences with a continuous aesthetically exemplary and emotionally enthralling rereading of the very popular Verdi drama. So "his" Traviata is coming to the Arena and it will really be a superlative synthesis of the continuous intellectual work on the opera that has accompanied the artist for his entire existence. So this is a new Traviata, which is at the same time the account of a long thought, and images, colours and suggestions that are instilled in the eyes and hearts of spectators all over the world, with quotes, memories, continuous re-thinking of far-off productions, almost an encyclopaedia of Zeffirelli’s stylistic reflections on the beloved opera. We could therefore describe this Arena Traviata as the extreme synthesis of a Wagnerian leitmotiv that was eternally suspended and in June 2019 finally completed. So this is all the more reason why it is an important production, above all for the young generations who have been unable to personally enjoy the great productions of the past and will find themselves faced with a fresco that features the anthology of a mind refined by experience and exalted by very lengthy reflection, which is both a historic and aesthetic document. All the those who wanted this Traviata have a long affectionate professional and personal involvement with it and with Zeffirelli: not only the city of Verona, whose main square features the colours conceived by the Florentine master; the Arena Festival that lives to a great extent thanks to his works and paid tribute to him in 2010 with a programme in which every production was directed and designed by him, but also General Manager and Artistic Director Cecilia Gasdia, who, on 9th December 1984 in Florence, sang it with Carlos Kleiber on the podium and Franco Zeffirelli directing, and Deputy Artistic Director Stefano Trespidi, who began his very long collaboration with Maestro Zeffirelli precisely at the Arena in 1995 with Carmen; not to mention all the Arena workers, deeply attached by fond experiences of collaboration with the Maestro and who keep his artistic message alive every year. The idea originally occurred in 2008, as his great personal desire for the love he has always had for Traviata, but only sees the light of day now after a long complex preparation, necessary due to the importance of the opera, the venue, the plot of affection and relations revolving round it, and the need to really ensure audiences the very essence of perfection, always sought with obstinate determination by theatre’s last artist-craftsman, a true ambassador of great Italian tradition worldwide. A great expert of the Arena’s very difficult stage, of which he knows each and every risk, with its hugeness and immense casts, but also a refined interpreter of the potential of that very space, which is so prestigious and frightening, Franco Zeffirelli will now therefore add his seventh production to his rich cursus honorum at the Arena, which is about to tell its glorious story in an ideal countdown to the hundredth Arena festival, drawing those who have always been his most valuable collaborators close to him in a great embrace. Among the self-quotes that will immediately catch the eye of more attentive spectators, it is worth mentioning the invention of the open curtain, presented for the first time on the occasion of the 1995 Arena Carmen, the love for coups de théâtre with an important open set change between the two scenes of Act II and the presence on stage of the original bed used in the 1983 film.

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