Review: "Traviata - A Free Prose Opera" Reinvents Verdi
Traviata - A Free Prose Opera (Traviata - Opera libera in prosa)
Written and directed by Andrea Caldi, Fabio Fassio, and Elena Romano
Directing consultant: Cecilia Vecchio
Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave
Based on La Dame aux Camélias, by Alexandre Dumas fils
Presented by Bottega di Cyrano – Teatro degli Acerbi
May 7, 2026 at Culture Lab LIC, 5-25 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, NYC
May 11, 2028 at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU, 24 W 12 St., Manhattan, NYC
May 12, 2026 at Casa Belvedere, 79 Howard Avenue, Staten Island, NYC
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| Andrea Caldi, Elena Romano, and Saverio Bari. Photo courtesy of Bottega di Cyrano. |
Traviata condenses its two-hour-plus original into a lean 70 minutes performed by a cast of three: Saverio Bari, Andrea Caldi, and Elena Romano, the latter two of whom also, with Fabio Fassion, wrote and direct the show. It also adds a metatheatrical frame, with the trio playing a group of actors who are attempting to stage La traviata without opera singers or sets. Their patchwork attire and battered suitcases containing some basic props and bits of costuming call to mind the strolling players of medieval and early modern Europe and England; and as in those older traditions, the actors–once they agree to give the show a try–rely on the audience's imagination to supply the settings in Paris and its environs and the extras who populate them. At a few points, suitcases are stacked to create makeshift tables, but the scene for each of the three acts is otherwise established merely by one of the actors reading and sketching with gestures its description from the libretto. The show's meta component also allows for opportunities to comment on, for example, the appeal of melodrama (after Caldi-as-actor laughs at an emotional scene he has just finished playing), the durability of art, and the cycle(s) of life.
The narrative adapted from the opera itself centers on the love that develops between the respectably bourgeois Alfredo (Andrea Caldi) and the titular fallen woman, the courtesan Violetta (Elena Romano). At first, when Alfredo sings and speaks of love, Violetta–who is at the time with the Baron, played by a hat on Bari's hand–tells him to look elsewhere and sings "I do not know how to love." She also feels suddenly indisposed, hinting at travails to come. Despite Violetta's denials, something about Alfredo stays with her, and the two become involved (one of the patches on her costume, is tellingly, a heart). However, Violetta's past subsequently catches up to her in the form of Alfredo's father (Saverio Bari), whose primary concern is family honor. What follows encompasses insults, a duel, illness, and the potential of forgiveness.
In adapting Verdi, Traviata does use pieces of music from the opera, and the characters do regularly sing to one another (Caldi's singing as the actor performing as Angelo at one point even becomes the source of some funny meta exchanges), and though the characters may comment on the melodrama in Violetta's story, they always play it straight, preserving its tragic impact. Bari has a very charming presence, contributes some smile-inducing pirouettes, and literally wears many hats (paired, at one point, with a maid's apron) as a variety of characters that he dexterously keeps distinct. Caldi is very expressive, and as poignant as Alfredo as he is funny as the actor playing him; and Romano, who has some great comedic moments of her own, also lends some lovely nuance to her performance as Violetta, from the expression on her face when Violetta lies, under duress, that she doesn't love Alfredo to the wholesale alteration in how Violetta moves and carries herself after she has grown seriously ill (a transition that is made in a wonderful scene of the other two cast members changing parts of her costume and wiping off her makeup). Caldi and Romano also play further roles in addition to the lovers and the actors playing them (though fewer than Bari), and the lighting in two brief scenes in which they do, one featuring gypsies and the other Spanish matadors, deserves mention for saturating the stage in blue and red, respectively, to excellent effect. The production maintains its mixture of popular and elite to the very end, where a laugh follows hard on the heels of tragedy. The characters also call attention to the resemblance between Verdi's opening and closing music, which suggests an analogue to the cycle of life and also to the cycle of performance, of theater actors finishing a play and starting again, or of new runs, or new adaptations. In fact, the last lines of Traviata, like Samuel Beckett's closing stage direction in Play to "Repeat play," suggest that the whole thing is just about to start again. Courtesans may prove mortal, but the theater that immortalizes them can always undergo one more resurrection.
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards
More reviews from In Scena! 2026:
Closed for the Holiday
Tale of a Potato
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