This past Saturday I was very excited to attend a live streaming at the mall of the Metropolitan Opera’s La Traviata. While I am by no means an expert on opera, I did take a class on the history of opera in my freshman year which introduced me to a variety of modern and classic operas. One of the first operas we saw in this class was an extravagant movie version of La Traviata, with ornate sets and period costumes. With this experience in mind, I was intrigued to see how the Met would stage the opera differently and whether this different staging would affect my experience and understanding of the opera.

The Met’s staging of the opera turned out to be an extreme minimalist style, with the stage surrounded by a blank circular wall and the only furniture being a few modern-looking couches and a giant clock. The characters costumes were similarly simplified and modern and the entire opera contained only a handful of props. While I’m sure the movie version I saw was closer to the original vision of the composer, I actually felt that this minimalist version allowed me to focus less on the external scenery and more on the internal conflicts of the characters which form the core of the narrative. Additionally, the strategic incorporation of objects heightened their dramatic significance, especially in the case of the giant clock which symbolizes the approaching death of the protagonist Viola. While her behavior in the opera at times comes across as light-hearted and flippant if you focus on her words alone, the presence of this ticking clock was a constant reminder that her actions might be motivated more by despair and desperation than frivolity.