A Barthesean Analysis of Revisionist Stagings of Verdi's La Traviata

Abstract

David Levin wrote in his book Unsettling Opera, “Staging has played an important role in the history of opera, dictating compositional choices and affecting public reception. However, the notion that staging is integral to both the interpretive work and the eventness of opera is relatively recent.”1 Levin made this remark in 2007, but more than ten years later, we still have not developed a consistent framework for which we as an audience can judge the value of revisionist productions. In this document I will analyze and evaluate three different productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata in terms of their effectiveness as revisionist stagings by using a set of criteria from the writings of Roland Barthes as laid out by Alessandra Lippucci in her article “Social Theorizing on the Operatic Stage: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s Postmodern Humanist Production of La Traviata.”2 Lippucci borrows Barthes’s concepts of relevance, logic, and innovation from his research in reading revisionist literature and applies these concepts to revisionist opera stagings. By demonstrating how we can use these three concepts (the Barthesean model) to create a standard by which to judge revisionist productions, I hope to uncover the value of revisionist productions and determine whether they are valid based on Barthesean principles. This paper will use information gained from isolating these productions of La Traviata as a microcosm for understanding the benefits and cultural necessity of welcoming and evaluating other operas staged in modern revisionist ways.