The many difficulties of any solo scene are multiplied when the set is a space, not a place. For the performer there’s nothing to refer to, to be a part of. For the audience, he’s only a figure in an image. Except that in W.D.’s fantasy, this isn’t a solo scene. Violetta is  there. In this sort of scenario, we are meant to assume that she is there in Alfredo’s imagination. The intent is to assist the performer by giving him a partner toward whom to direct his actions, intentions, and feelings. Otherwise, my goodness, his lonesome self would be left standing there, a clam on the halfshell, having to contact those actions, intentions, and feelings inside himself, and interpret them for us primarily with his voice. As in an opera. The director and conductor would be in the position of having to help him do that, if needed. And to receive this interpretation, we would need to be listening on a wavelength we had learned to tune into. Fearing a dearth of some or all of these conditions, the Interpreters-in-Chief “open up” the scene.

So we try to imagine Alfredo imagining that he and Violetta have wrapped themselves in robes decorated with the same flowered design shown in that upstage cutout; that they playfully remove duvets of the same design from the abstract white furnishings; and that they play a little sexual foreplay game of hide-and-seek (she, giggling, still in her symbolically red dress, just a friendlier version of her Act I persona—not much trace of the now-contented woman with the “placido sorriso dell’amor” that Alfredo tells us of.) But of course he’s not imagining her, because there she is, while he sings to her, weirdly, as if she’s not. It’s a theatre-games sort of idea—let’s improvise a scene to explore the relationship—and in an acting class or early exploratory rehearsal might be quite useful. But in a finished production, we can go along with the charade only by taking the events of this verisimilitudinous opera as metaphorical, not real. The fact that Yoncheva and Fabiano are talented and enter fully, even engagingly, into the charade actually worsens the damage. It’s bad when something wrong entertains.

“But how did the aria go? How did he sing?” you ask. Right. And look: here I went to Traviata mostly to hear two singers, and have devoted nearly all of my maiden blogpost to a few passing moments of the production. The truth is, I can’t tell you much about how Fabiano sang this scene, because between gently returning my jaw to neutral from its dropped position and trying to track what was going on in front of me, his voice (and the orchestra) were strictly on background, registering only the most general of impressions.To go at all beyond that, I’ll need to explore some reconstruction. This is what W.D. & Co. do. They yank our attention from ear to eye, from characters to concepts, whether we’re aware of it or not, whether we want them to or not. They place the music and singing in an accompanimental position vis à vis the physical action. As in a movie. Having accomplished that, they look for little moments in the music that can be linked to physical actions to “justify” them (the reverse of the natural operatic procedure). That requires only a certain inventive cleverness—easy pickin’s, really. Then, the director gets credit for great Personenregie. I rage, I melt, I burn.