Abstract
Beautiful, clever and universally desired, but mortally ill, Violetta Valéry lives as a courtesan in the thrill of the moment. She does not allow herself genuine feelings and believes that grand passion is an illusion. Until, that is, she encounters Alfredo one day: with him she intends to go far away from hedonistic Parisian society and start a new life. However, the past catches up with Violetta, and the love for which she yearns remains a dream, doomed to failure as it is within society’s value system. Only Verdi’s music, with its transcendental power, points to a better, more humane life beyond death. In his production, director David Hermann tells the story of the demise of the courtesan as a portrait study of a modern-day high-class escort girl who is crushed in the machinery of our competitive meritocracy, staging it in a cold, bleak landscape consisting of black leather seat furniture and platforms in which the public and the private spheres are no longer distinguishable. With his choice of subject matter, which for the time was shockingly realistic and critical, Giuseppe Verdi had already aimed for a perspective that reflected the present. David Hermann’s production also does this, describing our hedonistic desire for freedom and the resulting compulsion for self-optimisation.
General Music Director Fabio Luisi will be conducting this revival production. The young Armenian soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan can be heard as Violetta, a role in which she has already conquered the stages of Berlin, Munich, Glyndebourne and Rome. Tenor Liparit Avetisyan, who is also from Armenia, will be giving his Zurich début as Alfredo, having already thrilled Hamburg, Berlin, London and Moscow audiences in this role. George Petean will return to Zurich as Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont.