Exclusively at Nouveau and select Ster-Kinekor theatres countrywide, ten opulent operas, including five new productions, from the Met stage to the big digital screen.
Nouveau to screen The Met’s Production of Verdi’s La Traviata – One of opera’s most believed heroines.
Opera lovers are in for a treat when the next production from the current Met: Live in HD season – Giuseppe Verdi’s famous opera La Traviata – releases on the big screen at Nouveau and select Ster-Kinekor cinemas nationally from Saturday, 08 April for limited screenings.
Sonya Yoncheva reprises her widely praised interpretation of one of opera’s most beloved heroines, the tragic courtesan Violetta, a role in which she triumphed on the Met stage in 2015. Playing opposite her is Michael Fabiano as her lover, Alfredo, with Thomas Hampson in one of his most acclaimed Met roles as Alfredo’s protective father, Giorgio Germont.
“Traviata shines anew at the Met” (Huffington Post), as Sonya Yoncheva “grows into her stardom” (New York Times) as Violetta opposite Michael Fabiano’s “white-hot take” (New York Observer) on Alfredo. San Francisco Opera Music Director Nicola Luisotti conducts all performances, including the 11 March matinee performance that was filmed for broadcast to cinemas worldwide, including South Africa, as part of the 11th season of the Met’s Live in HD series, which now reaches more than 2000 movie theatres in 71 countries around the world.
Sonya Yoncheva has sung Violetta Valéry to critical acclaim at the Met in 2015, as well as with the Berlin State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Opéra de Monte-Carlo, and Royal Opera, Covent Garden. She made her Met debut in 2013 as Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto, followed by widely acclaimed company role debuts as Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème and Desdemona in the Met’s 2015 season premiere of Verdi’s Otello. She can be seen later this year as a soloist in the Met’s 50th Anniversary at Lincoln Center Gala in May, followed by reprising Mimì at La Scala and Violetta at the Bavarian State Opera. During the Met’s 2017-18 season, she will sing the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Mimì in La Bohème, and Luisa in Verdi’s Luisa Miller.
La Traviata is based on the play La Dame aux Camélias, which was adapted from the novel with the same title written by Alexandre Dumas, known frequently in English as Camille. The opera premiered at La Fenice on March 6, 1853 and received mostly negative reviews due to the casting of soprano Fanny Salvini-Donatelli as Violetta. At the time, although she was an acclaimed singer, she was considered too old for the role at the age of 38 and too heavy to play a young woman dying of consumption. Following the opening, Verdi rewrote sections of Acts 2 and 3, and re-opened the opera on May 6, 1854 at Teatro San Benedetto in Venice to much greater success, this time starring a much younger coloratura soprano, Maria Spezia-Aldighieri.
Verdi’s opera is the fourth-most-staged work at the Met, with 996 performances to date. The opera premiered during the company’s opening season on November 5, 1883 starring Emily Lablache as Violetta, Victor Capoul as Alfredo, and Giuseppe Del Puente as Giorgio Germont. Many notable Met sopranos have sung the role of Violetta, including Maria Callas, Nellie Melba, Joan Sutherland, and Beverly Sills, with Licia Albanese singing a record number of 87 performances of the role with the company.
The Met: Live in HD – 2016-17 Schedule
The season opened on 19 November with Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and was followed by Wagner’s epic tragedy, Tristan und Isolde from 03 December and the series’ first broadcast of Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin (07 January 2017). February saw Verdi’s famous Nabucco (04 February) and Charles Gounod’s lush adaptation of Shakespeare’s Roméo et Juliette (11 February) broadcast on the big screen, with Rusalka by Antonin Dvorak released on 25 March, and Verdi’s La Traviata from 08 April.
The final three productions in the current season are Idomeneo by Wolfang Amadeus Mozart (24 April), Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (20 May), and Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (10 June).
