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[Met Tour] CID:157010
La Traviata
Civic Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, Fri, May 11, 1951
La Traviata (347)
Giuseppe Verdi | Francesco Maria Piave
Review 1:
Review of Claudia Cassidy in the Chicago Tribune
Metropolitan Offers Seedy “Traviata” with Peerce, Kirsten, Valdengo
Luckily for the Metropolitan, it still has for the public at large an alluring label. I’m not sure what would happen if it had to stand or fall on the quality of its performances. For last night it followed the tasteless “Fledermaus” with what I can best describe as a seedy “La Traviata,” having just checked the dictionary to be sure the word means what I thought it meant, which is worn out, shabby, spiritless, or looking wretched. That just about seemed to fill the bill.
It was not just that the curtains in Violetta’s salon were filthy, or that the topiary effects in her garden needed repair. Nor was it altogether that Leonard Warren was found to be indisposed in time to print a slip naming Giuseppe Valdengo as his replacement, tho not in time, apparently to notify the public. There is nothing secret about the Met’s exigencies of casting or, due to the state of the exchequer, its décor.
The trouble with “Traviata” was not a matter of emergency, but a matter of habit. It was moribund in a way that doesn’t happen overnight. The staging was standard glazed with static. The orchestra was less predictable, for Alberto Erede frequently abandoned routine competence with a convulsive shudder to indicate that as a man who knows his Verdi he yearned to give that bloodless performance a transfusion from the score.
The evening’s most serious case of pernicious anemia came from the casting of Dorothy Kirsten as Violetta. Miss Kirsten has an exquisite figure and elegant costumes indeed, tho the dead blonde hair against the dead white face gives an albino effect rather than the Camille pallor set off by the traditional dark curls. But it is a difficult to believe that her voice in prime condition would cope with the glittering brilliance of Violetta’s first act fioriture, or capture the poignancy to come. It lacks the size, the range, the technique and the style. Plagued by vocal indisposition she made a travesty of the arias, and the wonderful music of the second act was chilled by her cold, calculating mimicry of style.
Mr. Peerce is no ball of fire as an operatic hero, nor will his tenor rattle the chandeliers. But he is a man who knows how to stand still and he sings with great beauty within the limitations of a small but silkily spun tenor which turned out to be the evening’s major comfort, assuming that one goes to the opera to hear people sing.
Mr. Valdengo’s elder Germont was a leisurely soul rather spread to baritone, so that he frequently seemed to be landing on a cluster of notes, and rather arch of manner, so that the paternal plea had somewhat the flavor of a sales talk, which, of course, in a way it is. Just about everything else went on routine schedule, except that George Cehanovsky is never routine, and that Violetta was a generous woman to permit a maid as pretty as Margaret Roggero around the garden. What I glimpsed of Anthony Tudor’s ballet was no more up to Tudor than “Lady of the Camellias,” which he got from being exposed to precisely this sort of “La Traviata.”
Search by season: 1950-51
Search by title: La Traviata,
Met careers
La Traviata
Civic Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, Fri, May 11, 1951
La Traviata (347)
Giuseppe Verdi | Francesco Maria Piave
- Violetta
- Dorothy Kirsten
- Alfredo
- Jan Peerce
- Germont
- Giuseppe Valdengo
- Flora
- Lucielle Browning [Last performance]
- Gastone
- Leslie Chabay [Last performance]
- Baron Douphol
- George Cehanovsky
- Marquis D'Obigny
- Lawrence Davidson
- Dr. Grenvil
- Clifford Harvuot
- Annina
- Margaret Roggero
- Dance
- Suzanne Ames
- Dance
- Tilda Morse
- Conductor
- Alberto Erede
Review 1:
Review of Claudia Cassidy in the Chicago Tribune
Metropolitan Offers Seedy “Traviata” with Peerce, Kirsten, Valdengo
Luckily for the Metropolitan, it still has for the public at large an alluring label. I’m not sure what would happen if it had to stand or fall on the quality of its performances. For last night it followed the tasteless “Fledermaus” with what I can best describe as a seedy “La Traviata,” having just checked the dictionary to be sure the word means what I thought it meant, which is worn out, shabby, spiritless, or looking wretched. That just about seemed to fill the bill.
It was not just that the curtains in Violetta’s salon were filthy, or that the topiary effects in her garden needed repair. Nor was it altogether that Leonard Warren was found to be indisposed in time to print a slip naming Giuseppe Valdengo as his replacement, tho not in time, apparently to notify the public. There is nothing secret about the Met’s exigencies of casting or, due to the state of the exchequer, its décor.
The trouble with “Traviata” was not a matter of emergency, but a matter of habit. It was moribund in a way that doesn’t happen overnight. The staging was standard glazed with static. The orchestra was less predictable, for Alberto Erede frequently abandoned routine competence with a convulsive shudder to indicate that as a man who knows his Verdi he yearned to give that bloodless performance a transfusion from the score.
The evening’s most serious case of pernicious anemia came from the casting of Dorothy Kirsten as Violetta. Miss Kirsten has an exquisite figure and elegant costumes indeed, tho the dead blonde hair against the dead white face gives an albino effect rather than the Camille pallor set off by the traditional dark curls. But it is a difficult to believe that her voice in prime condition would cope with the glittering brilliance of Violetta’s first act fioriture, or capture the poignancy to come. It lacks the size, the range, the technique and the style. Plagued by vocal indisposition she made a travesty of the arias, and the wonderful music of the second act was chilled by her cold, calculating mimicry of style.
Mr. Peerce is no ball of fire as an operatic hero, nor will his tenor rattle the chandeliers. But he is a man who knows how to stand still and he sings with great beauty within the limitations of a small but silkily spun tenor which turned out to be the evening’s major comfort, assuming that one goes to the opera to hear people sing.
Mr. Valdengo’s elder Germont was a leisurely soul rather spread to baritone, so that he frequently seemed to be landing on a cluster of notes, and rather arch of manner, so that the paternal plea had somewhat the flavor of a sales talk, which, of course, in a way it is. Just about everything else went on routine schedule, except that George Cehanovsky is never routine, and that Violetta was a generous woman to permit a maid as pretty as Margaret Roggero around the garden. What I glimpsed of Anthony Tudor’s ballet was no more up to Tudor than “Lady of the Camellias,” which he got from being exposed to precisely this sort of “La Traviata.”
Search by season: 1950-51
Search by title: La Traviata,
Met careers
- Alberto Erede [Conductor]
- Dorothy Kirsten [Violetta]
- Jan Peerce [Alfredo]
- Giuseppe Valdengo [Germont]
- Lucielle Browning [Flora]
- Leslie Chabay [Gastone]
- George Cehanovsky [Baron Douphol]
- Lawrence Davidson [Marquis D'Obigny]
- Clifford Harvuot [Dr. Grenvil]
- Margaret Roggero [Annina]
- Suzanne Ames [Dance]
- Tilda Morse [Dance]