LA TRAVIATA AND THE BEGINNING OF THE END

by Ana Wild

La Traviata and the beginning of the end is an adaptation of a canonical opera in a contemporary setting. 

Three performers conjure a memory of Verdi’s opera, perform it as a cultural artefact; take La Traviata apart to it’s components and utilize it as a ready-made object of emotional capacity.

On stage, three objects: a Venus de Milo replica, a photographic book by Claude Lévi-Strauss from his trips to Brazil, and the Twin Towers; three symbols that propose a relation to history and the way it is noted and deciphered. 

The performers map the range of meanings of these symbols by playfully relating to them both physically and emotionally. Thus the stage becomes a space for contemplation of society: a museum, a library, an opera house.

As La Traviata seeps through, the operatic catharsis appears as means of articulating a personal relation to society in our times.
Can we see ourselves in the historical, the symbolical, the grand, the romantic?