Not all sopranos can say the same thing, but Nadine Sierra can, who is a force of nature and has a privileged instrument: “When I sing Violetta I am lucky enough to not think about her technically, only about the character, about the music.” and in my own life, in my experiences, my disappointments in love, in the fact that I have not married and do not have children yet, and that I feel old and maybe I need Botox. “I don’t think about the voice, I simply abandon myself to the character.”
This is how the American singer reflected yesterday on the memento mori that the role of The wayward one for their interpreters. The courtesan who suffers social rejection and dies fatefully is a character from whom it is impossible to distance oneself, since she points to the emptiness of life and the relevance of death. Giuseppe Verdi composed this opera – the one that closes his Trilogy of Intimacy, after Rigoletto e The Troubadour – after seeing The Lady of the Camellias . It was his denunciation of the moral hypocrisy that he and the singer Giuseppina Strepponi suffered for living together without being married.
Today marks 201 years since the birth of Marie Duplessis, the courtesan who inspired Marguerite Gautier
The most representative title of the Italian opera repertoire returns to the Liceu – from January 17 to February 2 – with the classical production that bears the signature of David McVicar and that the Gran Teatre already showed off in the pandemic, when the theaters began to reopen with reduced capacity and two seats had to be left free for each one occupied. “Not everyone was able to see it, many spectators did not use the ticket in order to help the theater,” claimed yesterday the artistic director of the Liceu, Víctor García de Gomar.
Nadine Sierra, in the foreground, in a rehearsal of ‘La traviata’ at the Liceu
This Wednesday, the day of the dress rehearsal, marks 201 years since the birth of Marie Duplessis, the courtesan on which it is based The Lady of the Camellias and who is behind the character of Marguerite Gautier. McVicar and his artistic team toured the places inhabited by the former lover in Paris of a number of prominent and wealthy men. They sought proximity to the real person and their intimate spaces, for a “deeper and more resounding” interpretation. It was thus that they decided to begin the opera in flash back and that the staging would be presided over by Violetta’s tomb with the date of birth and death of Madame Duplessis: January 15, 1824 – February 3, 1847.
McVicar takes a leave of absence in the second act, when Alfredo throws the bills in Violetta’s face and a lady from the chorus insults him…
“95% of the narrative material comes from the script itself, with additions that come from the novel or the life of the protagonist,” says Leo Castaldi, the repository, who has been putting this production on stage since 2014. Some curtains serve, he explains, to create and accentuate intimacy on the large stage of the Liceu. And there is a license that McVicar takes in the second act, when Alfredo throws the bills in Violetta’s face and a lady from the chorus insults him, embarrassing him, as if it were the conscience of the audience itself within the theatrical performance.
This is Giacomo Sagripanti’s first Verdi from the Liceu podium, “the title that I have directed the most in my career,” says the Italian maestro who has a 2025 ahead of him full of commitments in the main opera houses in the world. And this production represents for him a happy reunion with Nadine Sierra and with the baritone Artur Rucinski in the role of Giorgio Germont, the father of the lover Alfredo who wants to save his son from social shame.
“I don’t agree with this idea of Violetta’s three voices, it doesn’t seem healthy to face the role in sections, it’s an artificial technique.”
In which of Violetta’s three voices does Nadine Sierra currently feel most comfortable, in the light-lyric of the first act, the pure lyric of the second or the lyric-dramatic of the third?
“I don’t agree with this idea of Violetta’s three voices. The three have to flow together. And I don’t think it’s healthy to face the role in sections, it’s an artificial technique. Either you have it or you don’t, but forcing it is wrong. Yes, I see three parts, but in the human aspect, because it is true that she changes throughout the opera, her world changes, she sees that her life has been short and she considers what she should do with the rest. “That should be the only driver of change for the soprano.”
The new queen of the Liceu – will return this season with The sleepwalker the recital with Pretty Yende and West Side Story – has as a partner the Mexican tenor Javier Camarena, if he finally recovers from the coughing crisis that this Tuesday prevented him from joining the cast and artistic team to present the opera. In any case, Xabier Anduaga from San Sebastián takes on the role in the second cast alongside Ruth Iniesta from Zaragoza…
Source: www.lavanguardia.com
