NYC Opera - La Traviata

The MET

 I got to go The Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center last week. This is the first time I have gone in almost two years, so I was long overdue. I saw La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi with my friend    Isha. She is an amazing opera singer and I was glad to be able to spend some time with her. Anyway I have seen this Opera before in Utah and out of all the Opera's I have seen this one was by far my favorite even though I haven't seen that many, so I was excited to see it again in NYC.  

Right when you walk into the building there is this beautiful chandelier that is stunning. There is 49,000 pieces of Swarovski crystal that hang on rods and apparently costs more than a million dollars!

If you go downstairs there is rows and rows of opera singers from previous performances. The one thing that I like about Opera is that most people who sing aren't beautiful especially, but they have beautiful voices and what they look like doesn't matter as long as they can fill that Opera house with their voice.

I love the costumes of these characters.

 

La Traviata is sung in Italian, so everybody has a translation screen in front of them.

This La Traviata performance was different from the one I saw in Utah because they put a modern/contemporary feel to the set. The set is half a clock and really didn't change much from this original concept. On the far right they have an large clock that represents the mortality of the main character Violetta. She has tb and is dying slowly, so throughout the performance you always have a view of the clock. I enjoyed the modern aspects of this stage for the first Act, but by the second and third act I really thought it could have been done differently and with more emotion because it felt very cold to me. So, I just shut my eyes and listened to the music which is amazing!!! Blew my mind. All of the three main characters voices were spectacular and I could of listened to them all night.

Like most Opera's I have seen this one of course starts with love and ends in death. The hardest part about watching and enjoying these performances is making sure I don't think they are real and get too caught up in the characters or I become a basket case. There never seems to be a happy ending just like life I guess you just get through it and hope for the best!