[Met Tour] CID:137570



La Traviata
Civic Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, Tue, April 18, 1944




La Traviata (267)
Giuseppe Verdi | Francesco Maria Piave
Violetta
Licia Albanese

Alfredo
Armand Tokatyan

Germont
Leonard Warren

Flora
Thelma Votipka

Gastone
Alessio De Paolis

Baron Douphol
George Cehanovsky

Marquis D'Obigny
John Baker

Dr. Grenvil
Lorenzo Alvary

Annina
Mona Paulee

Dance
Leon Varkas

Dance
Michael Arshansky


Conductor
Pietro Cimara







Review 1:

Review of Claudia Cassidy in the Chicago Tribune

Met's Singing of 'La Traviata' Has Its Flaws

Perhaps people should pack memories in mothballs when they go to the opera. They keep better that way and do less harm. For, if you went to the Metropolitan's "La Traviata" at the Civic Opera House last night, and took along fond recollections of brilliant nights when sparkling elegance jeweled Verdi's version of the tragic lady of the camellias, you had your disappointments.

True, Leonard Warren did the best singing of his Chicago career as papa Germont, focusing that big bellowing baritone in a line as serene and soft as down, looking a happy country squire with Falstaffian face in the process. Also true, Licia Albanese did some exquisite singing once she was past the hazards of a first act which inexplicably trapped her into forcing a voice far too beautiful for such reckless treatment. And there was Armand Tokatyan's Alfredo, not ideally cast for voice, but as an imaginative tenor who prefers scattering rose petals to playing operatic peekaboo when he slips up quietly behind his musing lady.

There were these things, and some experts in minor roles - artists like Thelma Votipka, George Cehanovsky, and Alessio de Paolis, who made bits into people and like little Mona Paulee, who actually sang Annina, who is customarily squawked. But the staging, in our own settings, was undistinguished, and in the orchestra pit Mr. Cimara seemed to have no idea of the imperishable loveliness of the score, or much interest in fitting that score to the supple style of Veridan song. He took a slow, and often a dreary, pace.

But the major disappointment was that first act of Albanese's, which only last season was taking on the glow of stardom. The score is difficult and dangerous for lyric soprano - Gatti-Casazza used to say Bori was too valuable to risk herself in it too often. But when the Met came here last spring one of its joys was the dexterity, the clarity and the glitter with which Albanese tossed off the bravura of "Ah, fors' ? lui" and "Sempre libera." Perhaps she was just in poor voice last night at the beginning, perhaps like many a young singer she just tried too hard. But I hope she was not satisfied with that first act, for all the warm applause she won. She has it in her to be a superb Violetta, once she can get her voice completely in hand and learns about costumes - if possible from the exquisitely elegant Bori. It will be worth the effort.



Search by season: 1943-44

Search by title: La Traviata,



Met careers