Tragic ‘Traviata’

The title of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” doesn’t translate easily into English. “The Prostitute” sounds too blunt, “The Courtesan” too prissy. A literal translation – “The Wayward Woman” – comes close, but doesn’t fall very gracefully off the tongue.

But whatever it you choose to call it, in whatever language, “La Traviata” is one of Verdi’s most triumphant achievements.

Spokane-Coeur d’Alene Opera will begin a four-performance run of “La Traviata” on Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Central Valley Performing Arts Center on the Central Valley High School campus. It will be performed in the original Italian with English supertitles.

The familiar story has Alfredo Germont as a rash young man from Provence falling for Violetta, a popular Parisian party girl. Surprising herself, she falls for him, too, and takes him away to her love nest in the country.

From then on, the story is a tragedy of abandonment, jealousy, illness and death.

“People love it because of the music; there are more hit tunes in ‘Traviata’ than in almost any other opera,” says Bill Graham, Spokane-Coeur d’Alene Opera executive director, who will direct the production.

“And part of the allure is visual; the party scenes of Acts I and IV are fun with ball gowns and formal attire,” Graham says. “Then there’s the continuous passion of Violetta and Alfredo and the tension between Violetta and Alfredo’s father that makes a great story.”

The principal roles are taken by soprano Leslie Mauldin as Violetta, tenor Chad A. Johnson as Alfredo, and baritone David Malis as Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont.

Mauldin sang Michaela in Spokane-Coeur d’Alene’s 2001 production of “Le Tragedie de Carmen,” the Peter Brooks adaptation of Bizet’s opera, and last season sang Musetta in the company’s production of “La Boheme.”

A Los Angeles native, Mauldin combines a career in opera and in film. She is a resident company member of Boise’s Opera Idaho and is the company’s summer artistic director as well as founder of Opera Etc. in Boise.

“The world of opera is a networking business,” Graham says. “Leslie had sung a ‘Traviata’ with David Malis, so she told us about him. And we learned about Chad Johnson because David had done a production of the opera with Chad at Florida Grand Opera.

“We trust our singers to guide us to other singers, because they sing well with colleagues they like and trust.”

Johnson grew up in Michigan and studied voice at Western Michigan University, the University of Kentucky and at the American Institute for Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.

He has participated in the young artist programs at Chicago Opera Theater, Santa Fe Opera and the Florida Grand Opera, and has major roles at Glimmerglass Opera, Opera Omaha, Lyric Opera San Diego and Florida Grand Opera.

Malis was the 1985 winner of the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, the only American to have done so.

He is opera director of the Crested Butte Festival in Colorado and has sung at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, with the San Francisco Opera and at other great houses such as Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, La Scala in Milan and London’s Covent Garden.

Performers singing the secondary roles in “La Traviata” include Heather Holzapfel as Flora; Patrick Anderson as Gastone; Carlos Monzon as Dr. Grenville; Kimberly Monzon as Annina; Kent Kimball as Baron Douphol; and Joe Jolley as the Marquis d’Obigny.

Joseph Mechavich, who conducted Spokane-Coeur d’Alene Opera’s 2004 production of “Elixir of Love” and its 2005 production of “La Boheme,” will conduct a 15-piece orchestra.

Mechavich, music director of Opera Birmingham, is a guest conductor with several U.S. opera companies and is active as a piano soloist and in chamber music.

Marjory Halvorson, the company’s co-founder and producer, is the costume designer. Janet Wilder supervised the choreography, and George Caldwell of the Oregon State University theater department designed the sets.