An Elegant Debut

By William Bender

The Metropolitan Opera has been putting on La Traviata with regular success ever since its first season in 1883.

Like many Verdi operas, it works well enough with the usual bella voce cast tossing forth one hit aria after another.

But as Verdi's venture into what might be called upper-class verismo--he set it in the drawing rooms of his own time--the work cries out for an elegant musical approach and superior acting on the part of the heroine. Both were in ample supply last week. At long last, Conductor Sarah Caldwell (TIME cover, Nov. 10) made her debut at the Met, and Soprano Beverly Sills sang her first Met Violetta--her second role there since her successful debut last April in The Siege of Corinth.

Barn in Winter. Under Caldwell's baton, the orchestra became an involved member of the drama, not a bored bystander. She gave Verdi's familiar music breadth, intimacy and, when appropriate, thoughtful pause. Her bold use of the brass and low strings, for example, gave the orchestral fabric a strikingly firm and secure bottom. One heard small details, often lost, that underscore Violetta's isolation: the clarinet obbligato accompanying the Act I "Ah! fors' e lui" and the oboe solo in the death scene.

Still it was not a perfect Traviata. Created nine years ago by Director Alfred Lunt and Designer Cecil Beaton, this production has Violetta's bedroom looking like a barn in winter--something Walt Disney might have conceived in homage to Charles Addams. Because the windows are so high and remote, the poor girl cannot even get to the win dow to watch the revelers in the last act. The current stage director, Fabrizio Melano, has not really resolved all the old problems: the Baron's challenge to Alfredo in Act III, for example, comes off much too tame.

As Alfredo, Tenor Stuart Burrows sang with taste and grace, but he lacks the sharp vocal and theatrical edge required by the role. Sills started off with a surprisingly wide vibrato that spoiled some of her high notes. But the problem cleared up, and the confrontation with Germont--splendidly sung by Baritone William Walker--was in ev ery way convincing. Looking slim and sexy, Sills throughout the evening exhibited an appealing range of emotions and musicality. From the glossy extravagances of the opening party scene to the despair of her pact with Germont, Sills once again asserted her claim as the finest singing actress in the world.

Violetta is a role that Sills has sung only three times before in New York, but close to 300 times elsewhere throughout her career. It remains one of her no blest portrayals.

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