by Timothy Robson

Few of us who love opera but do not participate in its performance have a true idea of all of the thought, energy and struggle that go into the creation of a new production, even of an opera performed as often as Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata. On Friday, September 6, the Cleveland Museum of Art gave the Cleveland premiere showing of French director Philippe Béziat’s 2012 documentary Becoming Traviata (original title, Traviata et nous).

The film follows director Jean-François Sivadier as he prepares a production of the Verdi classic starring French soprano Natalie Dessay as Violetta Valery and American tenor Charles Castronovo as Alfredo Germont. French baritone Ludovic Tezier plays the pivotal role of Alfredo’s father Giorgio Germont. Louis Langrée was the conductor for the production, made for the 2011 Aix-en-Provence Festival in France.

From the beginning, there are the challenges of working language, with French and American principals, a British orchestra (the London Symphony) and an Estonian chorus. It is fascinating to watch Sivadier switch seamlessly between French, English and Italian, sometimes a sentence at a time. [Read more…]