Yutaka Sado, Orchestre de Paris, Mireille Delunsch, Matthew Polenzani - Verdi: La Traviata (2007/2003)

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Yutaka Sado, Orchestre de Paris, Mireille Delunsch, Matthew Polenzani - Verdi: La Traviata (2007/2003)

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"This is the story of a dying woman. It is written as such. This is what it tells. During the performance, this woman dies before your eyes, in what is practically a live event. There is no way to conjure the fact away. The main subject of this opera is death and there is no way to avoid that. Death with love. Love with death. One and the other, one in the other." (Peter Mussbach)
For opera fans in France, 2003 was supposed to be the year of the "Traviata Wars." Competing stagings at the country's two great lyric festivals, Aix-en-Provence and the Chorégies d'Orange, were to offer two candidates for Verdi stardom in the role of Violetta - Mireille Delunsch and Inva Mula. The Aix production, directed by Peter Mussbach and conducted by Yutaka Sado, was scheduled for early July and planned for a nationwide telecast. In late June, however, a political storm broke out over a reform package for temporary workers in the performing arts - the intermittents. Strikes followed and protesters began to force the cancellation of one festival after another. The Aix Traviata was one of their first victims, cancelled after noise and chanting from the striking temps outside the open-air theatre sabotaged the first performance.
The only performance from the eventful 2003 Festival d'Aix to survive, this Traviata is carried all the way through by a radiant Mireille Delunsch, who, as always, pushes the limits of her art. She appears in a wedding dress, evoking a sacrificial icon, reminiscent of both Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana, trapped by tragedy.
Filmed by Don Kent, a master in the domain, Peter Mussbach's brilliant production is one long flashback, which leaves the spectator breathless. The strikingly lit set is viewed as if from the driver's seat of a car, at night, with the windscreen wipers occasionally sweeping the foreground. The action takes place in front of the headlights [with the protagonists occasionally looking as though playing in traffic]. Violetta is the only character in brilliant white, all others are in black. The scenery looks ominously reminiscent of the tunnel at Pont D'Alma in Paris - Violetta is most definitely doomed.

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Yutaka Sado, Orchestre de Paris, Mireille Delunsch, Matthew Polenzani - Verdi: La Traviata (2007/2003)

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Yutaka Sado, Orchestre de Paris, Mireille Delunsch, Matthew Polenzani - Verdi: La Traviata (2007/2003)

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Yutaka Sado, Orchestre de Paris, Mireille Delunsch, Matthew Polenzani - Verdi: La Traviata (2007/2003)

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