Already a classic

In Milan La Scala, the shows of the new "travate" , delivered by Dmitry Chernyakov, continue. The performances are going on until January 3, but the tickets were swept away on the first day of sales - simply because it is Milan and Traviata. To these two circumstances, laudatory reviews, exciting rumors, overheated expectations, and the aroma of the scandal have now been added. "Sunnered" at the premiere of tenor Peter stared offendedly writes on Facebook that he will no longer work in Italy. Maestro Daniele Gatti with a noticeable haste begins the second action without bowing before this spectators. The performance was divorced on YouTube , they are torn and, having hit, they ask with surprise: “What, in fact, is there?”

It seems to me that Chernyakov’s play is prepared about the same fate as his “Onegin” in Bolshoi. Two sacred cows. The first show of the “Traviata” ended in the indignant “BU” (in our case, instead of “BU” was the sound of Galina Vishnevskaya’s heels). Already on the second evening, the performance became a classic. The third is a standing ovation. As in Onegin, the director here so gently climbs into the spectator’s brain that it is impossible to imagine this story somehow differently told. The previous one - with consumption and estate prejudices - is supplanted. A new one is very painstakingly and neatly inserted.

Violetta is not a victim of circumstances, waiting, as befits a woman, true love. There is no true love. Or is there still? And what is it at all - love? Is this about two people or after all about one? As always, after the most catchy performances of Chernyakov, our kind of Opera von Trier, you later go in this trouble, peer into yourself, in friends and you will learn a lot about yourself and about them. Surprisingly that this process was able to launch, say, the textbook aria E Strano.

So, Violetta is not a sacrifice. She is the ruler of her own fate . Heiress of Naina from Chernyakovsky "Ruslan". The winner, a maximalist, an experimenter, confident, strong, gambling, complex, false and sincere, cold and hot, playing out different roles, in one of which she does not have time to slow down . Somehow it is necessary to explain her death, and Chernyakov invents pills and alcohol, but actually she dies from loneliness. The title role grows to such sizes that several performances can be fitted into it. And the craftswoman Diana Damrau copes with this task five with a plus, simultaneously not forgetting to engage in the finest vocal work. In her bow, she is unchanged thunder ovations. For all her inadvertent appearance, the German singer turned out to be a favorite of Violetta at the Snobsky Milan public.

The story of Violetta and Alfred is not a love story, but a series of discrepancies. They have different expectations, different temperature curves. Everyone goes their own path. The path of Alfred (this role is very well sewn under the Poles of Peter Bucal) is easier and more offensive. His ceiling is domestic family happiness, over which Chernyakov will never miss the opportunity to grin sarcastically. In this case, he grinned the most luxurious way in the context of his own work. Sweet kitchen lapota of a suburban nest and a joint batch of dough under the aria about love paradise. He is in an apron, she is in shapeless plush slippers, eroticism zero, it is just right to put an advertisement for washing powder. At this place in the opera “Traviat” was once the most important sweetness, and now-here is a slap in the face. However, if you do not want, you can not notice it. The director plays with the viewer like Violetta with Alfred.

The path of Violetta is more complicated, dizzy and, in a sense, happier, because this is not a way along a vicious circle. She needs another degree of emotions, she comes up with all kinds of trials, obstacles (the benefit of the opera plot somehow rolls and can, catching on it, fly away anywhere). A fake letter indicating financial difficulties. An unexpected jump from kitchen stability back into the weightlessness and independence of a secular party. The mysterious figure of the father (the beautiful Serbian baritone Zhelko Luchich) is as chopped as much as possible. Sometimes it seems that there is no father, and this is something in their inner voices whisper in the ear. Much more material than he, the figures of the two constantly looking for the main characters of the officers. How will Alfred behave?

But he does not overcome obstacles. He is bewildered, frightened, angry. He forgot about love, cannot step over a boyish insult. In the scene of the party at Flora, he does not humiliate Violetta, but she herself kneels in front of him, tears a stupid wig, as if diving into the hole, remains unprotected, but fearless. And he is afraid, his heart is locked. All. End. The experiment failed. In the last scene, where it is supposed to let a tear over the suffering of two loving hearts, he appears with a plastic idol with a cake box that nevertheless glances at the clock. A strong woman broke about a weak man. Such a story.