In Decker’s Traviata, there is no physical illness. Violetta dies of lifestyle and oppression. Her “O, qual pallor” is sung not to the sight of her face in the mirror, but to that of Death/Grenvil roaming the perimeter, and most of the characters’ behavior arises not from lifelike interactions among them, but from an imperative to keep moving in circles. These conditions represent two of the most damnable tendencies in contemporary staging, namely, the exteriorization of all inner, private feeling (which invariably substitutes physicalization for vocal expression), and the dictation of action by an abstract concept. Their distracting, attention-shifting effects are present throughout the production, but most egregiously at the opening of Act II. It’s worth setting the scene as it was suggested by the operawright, Verdi/Piave.

The stage represents a drawing-room on the ground floor of the country house Violetta and Alfredo have settled into for their new life together. A garden is visible at the back and, as was becoming customary around this time, the text (I refer to the vocal score of the U. of Chicago/Ricordi critical edition) includes some detail with respect to the room, disposition of furnishings and props, etc. There’s a brief orchestral introduction, a blithe little tune that skips downward on a feathery bed, is repeated, then brought to full stop with two bars of ta-da! to make way for the voice’s first entrance. To judge from the layout of the stage directions, the curtain rises as the music starts. The stage is empty, but Alfredo enters immediately. He’s in hunting costume and carries a gun. Discovering that Violetta is not in the room, he sings his first line of recitative (“Away from her, for me there’s no delight”), and with this last word (“diletto”) puts down the gun.

It used to be that performers took many liberties with the text, claiming full possession of music and action, while designers took little or none—the reverse of the current situation.  I am also fairly certain that in the theatre of Verdi/Piave, both this scene and Violetta’s at the close of Act I would have been direct-address arias. Both are fully formed recitative-aria-cabaletta numbers in which the protagonists confess their innermost feelings to the audience, and in which the cabaletta marks a decisive new action. Our stagecraft finds this convention awkward and tries to bind such scenes into the ongoing “private” stage lives of the characters, repeatedly bumping into the older convention in the process. (For a discussion of aspects of the only production of Traviata I have seen succeed in this effort, see Opera as Opera, Part IV, Chap. 4.) However a director and designer decide to approach this and related questions, there is one important thing to understand: this scene is a monologue. Whether our Alfredo is stepping through the Fourth Wall and singing directly to us or staying behind it and singing to himself, he is confiding intimate feelings in the absence of his beloved, to whom he refers in the third person throughout.