Opening Night at the Opera

The opera season started tonight with Washington National Opera's new production of the Verdi opera, La Traviata, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It was a glittering, black tie evening at the Kennedy Center, but the more exciting crowd wasn't the 2,400 at the Opera House, it was the estimated 15,000 at Nationals Park, the new baseball stadium in southeast Washington, where operaphiles watched the show as a simulcast on the enormous flat panel HD TV in the scoreboard as they sat in the stands or out on the grass. The ball park was where Matt, Robert, and I went.

This is the fourth year that WNO has done an outdoor simulcast, though the previous three were out on the national Mall.

Now, there are pros and cons to the two locations. What I miss about the Mall is that we were able to take our gourmet picnic baskets and eat our own foods. The nice thing about the ball park was real seating and real restrooms. Of course, we would have been better off financially had we gone to the Kennedy Center, since concessions at the ball park are exorbitantly expensive (and "exorbitant" is not a strong enough word to convey their pricing plans), even more expensive than going to a big city movie theater. Robert spent nearly $7 a piece for his chili half smokes, something one can buy from a street vendor in town for $1.75. Right before the performance, I bought a little cup of faux champagne (which I had to ask the seller to top off twice, and she still didn't completely fill the cup) and a small bottle of water, and it cost me $17.50! I also saw them using tiny little cups for still wine drinkers, and they were using those little individual serving bottles of wine, but only giving people about half of one of those little bottles!

The interesting thing about Traviata as a popular opera is the matter of familiar tunes. There's really only one tune—the famous "Libiamo" duet and chorus—with wide recognition, and then amongst hard core operaphiles there are maybe one or two well-known arias, but those arias aren't really recognized by the general public. I was prepared, though, for the "Libiamo" chorus with my glass of champagne so I could drink along with the cast!

Speaking of drinking champagne, the ball park is trying to be "green" now, so they were using some of the same biodegradable cups made from corn that Nancy Pelosi forced upon the House of Representatives and its cafeterias. Unfortunately, those cups have a rather disconcerting tongue "feel" that distracts from the enjoyment of the wine. I'm also of the opinion that these supplies have a taste, or at least the flatware does, since I've experimented with chewing a spoon before and it definitely was not taste-neutral to me. If the ball park is going to charge triple the cost of a bottle for a little cup of wine, they need to provide a decent glass or cup from which to drink.

We went, though, to see the opera, not eat the ball park food. La Traviata is one of the "old war horse," very popular, and commonly done operas, and those of you who recall the Richard Gere/Julia Roberts movie Pretty Woman will remember their trip to the opera to see Traviata. Some people have also compared elements of the opera to the Nicole Kidman/Ewan MacGregor movie Moulin Rouge.

After opening with the national anthem (which surprised me), they moved straight into the overture for the opera. The Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra was under the baton of Dan Ettinger, a new conductor I'd never seen who Robert said reminded him of Perez Hilton. I don't know about that, but I was absolutely appalled by the get-up he was wearing; it looked like an old, black, '70s leisure suit with a long, long tail, rounded in back, and some kind of black shirt underneath we never could really clearly see.

The fabulous Elizabeth Futral stars as Violetta. She was in magnificent voice. I thought she looked tired during much of the show, though, and I couldn't tell if that was "real life" tired or an attempt to portray the terminal illness of the character. Co-starring with her as Alfredo is Arturo Chacón-Cruz, a young Mexican tenor who was wonderfully youthful, earnest and energetic, and I really liked his voice. He's definitely a singer to watch. While the two of them sounded good together, I didn't sense a lot of chemistry between them, and with the telecast close-ups, their hugs and love scenes were not convincing from just the visual perspective.

Lado Ataneli as Germont père and Margaret Thompson as Flora both offered strong supporting roles.

During the scene change in the middle of act two, they projected on the ball park screens that it was the "seventh aria stretch."

Marta Domingo, wife of the artistic director and general manager Plácido Domingo, was the stage director and put together some impressive crowd scenes and kept the action going. In fact, she chose to chop off the last two pages of the score, ending the opera as soon as Violetta dies.

Costumes and sets are beautiful and lavish. I was particularly impressed with the lighting design by Joan Sullivan-Genthe, who kept the action areas of the stage illuminated without harsh spotlighting and who allowed Violetta's bed at the end of the opera seemingly to glow, rather than being directly lit.

There are another six or seven performances of La Traviata between now and October 5. This would be a great show for people looking for their "first opera" or who just like Verdian grand opera.

From what I was hearing from WNO staff, they are planning on doing this again next year at the ball park. I suppose that's okay (I miss the picnics on the Mall!); certainly the television screen in the scoreboard is far superior to the temporary screens they've put up in the past. I'm not sure what I feel about the amplification of sound, though, since the sound came from behind us, not from in front in the area of the screen. And, they've got two major problems to address. First is the concessions cost. It's totally out of hand, especially given the very long lines. Second, they've got to deal with noise from the concessions area. Throughout the opera, we could hear noise from the vendors drifting down into the stands, and it was most especially noticeable and distracting during the final act as Violetta was dying. The vendors were yelling at one another, playing their own music, and moving loud, noisy carts up and down the walk ways.

Opera does attract a different element from the usual baseball crowd. Generally at baseball performances, people leave their concessions trash and refuse laying on the floor by their seats, but tonight I saw countless people carrying out their trash to put in trash cans that quickly and unexpectedly filled.

Robert brought his camera tonight and he and I took about five dozen photos. Once he sends them to me, I'll edit a few and put them up. Robert was cranky after the show because there was no place in the area to go for a post-performance cocktail or even a nice place to grab a bite to eat. We ended up at a McDonald's a few blocks away from the ball park. If anybody wants to try a new business venture, setting up a bar with food really near the stadium with the capability of handling big crowds before and after ball performances and other events could be an extremely profitable venture.