“Nuremberg succeeds with a magnificent Traviata. Very plausible, touching, moving. Responsible for this is director Ilaria Lanzino, who did not go against the grain of the piece, not at all, but instead worked out what is central in this great drama. A truly genuine story here at the Staatstheater Nürnberg, above all because it was told in such a detailed and intelligent way. The performance gains enormous acting intensity. We have Traviata pure, although it is told so differently. This is not modernist, it is, in the best sense, of today, because this production concerns us all. (…) In fact, director Ilaria Lanzino at the Staatstheater Nürnberg penetrates to the core of the tragedy. This disturbed the audience at the time of the premiere and therefore should do so now. Stigmatization, social ostracism, relentless realism — Lanzino finds a translation of all this into today. Not for a second does she fall into the trap of superficial updating. (…) Even down to the silent supporting roles, everything unfolds enormous acting energy. Every gesture, every step seems motivated by the moment. (…) Verdi’s evergreens never degenerate into showpieces. The inner conflict in Violetta’s “È strano”, the fierce confrontation with Alfredo in the duet of the second act, the futilely flaring utopia in the death aria “Addio del passato” — all this is taken unusually seriously. (…) One follows every scene breathlessly: everything works out astonishingly well. (…) And one experiences how convinced and thereby convincing everyone dedicates themselves to this musical and scenic concept. Without betraying tradition, a stage success like new arises — a performance that hits both heart and mind. A truly complete theatrical experience, where the piece is stripped down to its central moments and fields of force.”

Markus Thiel, Merkur

 

“A radical new production. Director Ilaria Lanzino dares strong, sometimes painful images and finds a radically contemporary translation of Verdi’s La Traviata. Her hyperrealistic film sequences, the precisely interlocked tutti scenes of ensemble, orchestra, and video rhythm create an oppressive sense of immediacy. Disturbing, touching, necessary. Ilaria Lanzino’s La Traviata is not an aesthetic experiment but a sharp, painful commentary on our present: an opera about violence, hypocrisy, and digital coldness. At the center, a woman who breaks under it. The audience reacted with loud applause.”

Kunst und Technik

 

“Humiliated as a whore on the internet: La Traviata at the opera house reaches the viral pain threshold. Can the theme of the ostracized prostitute still serve as a provocation? Verdi’s La Traviata is modernized at the opera house by director Ilaria Lanzino: she turns the main character into the victim of a smear campaign on social media. That has explosive potential. (…) On October 4th there was a genuine sensation to be witnessed at the opera house. Director Ilaria Lanzino radically relocates the drama of the socially ostracized Violetta Valery into the present and tells the story of a young woman who does not die of tuberculosis, but of the psychological destruction caused by digital stigmatization. Lanzino develops the plot in our world, in which the internet forgets nothing and the digital public judges mercilessly. Her Violetta is not a courtesan of the 19th century but a young woman of today who, after being filmed during a rape at a party, becomes the victim of a viral shitstorm. The video showing her in a moment of total defenselessness spreads rapidly. In the video installations by Max Hammel and Lisa Rodlbauer, the scandal video goes viral, complete with comments, likes, digital hate — a multimedia nightmare. Thus the real person of Violetta is overlaid by the digital image of the “whore,” as online comments crudely put it, thereby humiliating the rape victim further and further. The label is irreversible, the social ostracism total. Lanzino consistently demonstrates how the dynamics of the internet have developed into a new form of the inevitable — a digital damnation that reaches into the most private decisions. Seen this way, Violetta makes a mistake when she opens herself to her love for Alfredo. In doing so, she becomes vulnerable and gives up her defense mechanisms against social stigmatization. With terrible consequences — she perishes from social ostracism, she, though still full of life as a young woman, dies a social death. Lanzino finds an intelligent idea for this in the final act, where a lonely hospital bed stands on the stage. In this way, Lanzino’s production convinces as a clever commentary on the present. She shows how the mechanisms of exclusion have changed without losing their destructive power. Violetta does not die of a disease but of the impossibility of freeing herself from an extremely negative image that others have created of her. In this sense, this Traviata is anti-romantic in the best way. The Staatstheater starts the opera season with an exclamation mark.”

NN

 

“Thanks to director Ilaria Lanzino, Verdi’s La Traviata at the Staatstheater experiences not a labored modernization but the recovery of theatrical and relevant explosive force of a masterpiece. In the new production of La Traviata, the social panorama of this ever-popular and therefore easily dangerous repertoire favorite becomes a highly contemporary study of manners by Lanzino. Now, in place of Alexandre Dumas fils’ Camille and Verdi’s adaptation into the story of a ‘fallen woman,’ comes the fate of a victim of social media and the anonymous violence of shitstorms. This condensed updating works astonishingly well, consistently and logically. Once again, Lanzino operates in her contemporary topography with the starkness of documentary research — with the same harshness as Dumas’ novel.”

Concerti

 

“Bulls, bunnies, shitstorms: the new Nuremberg La Traviata updates bitterly and sensitively. Gripping theatre. The huge final applause signaled: Andromahi Raptis, Sergei Nikolaev and Ilaria Lanzino are the dream team of the Nuremberg Opera — already welded together in their third joint production. Lanzino’s main theme is not the double standards of the bourgeoisie but the excommunication of victims of digital mockery. Now the demand for renunciation gains movement. Violetta renounces Alfredo, becomes, through trauma and excesses, a ruined victim, and in a shocking encounter finally becomes a wreck and dies. A fascinating as well as devastating downfall without any prospect of salvation. Loud ovations.”

NMZ

 

“In Ilaria Lanzino’s radical Traviata at the Staatstheater Nürnberg, Violetta Valery becomes the victim of a society that shares its violence live and earns likes for it. No sweetness, no comfort, but an opera as a mirror of our digital self-love. Violetta is no diva, no salon lady, but a woman destroyed by the circumstances on which she emotionally depends. A hauntingly intense character portrayal. An absolutely contemporary commentary on the dismal realization that many of us are amusing ourselves to death.”

Bayerischer Rundfunk

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“Ilaria Lanzino delivers a radical and uncompromising interpretation of the work in the present day. Director Ilaria Lanzino views the piece as thoroughly contemporary and presents in Nuremberg a production that leaves nothing to be desired in terms of radicality and relentlessness. Lanzino pursues her dark concept mercilessly, dividing and polarizing audiences. Director Ilaria Lanzino has succeeded in creating a production that people will — and must — talk about.”

O-Ton

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“A radical, contemporary interpretation. A shattering reinterpretation.”

Donaukurier

 

“What happens when one has fallen from grace? Ilaria Lanzino provides a fascinating answer in her new staging of Verdi’s La Traviata. (…) On the stage of the State Theatre, one can marvel at how Francesco Maria Piave’s text and Verdi’s musical interpretation blend almost seamlessly with Ilaria Lanzino’s storytelling. This is due in no small part to the Italian director’s keen eye for detail, with which she never overburdens the action. Even in the opulent scenes, economy remains her guiding principle, and not only in the intimate encounters between the conflicted trio of Violetta, Alfredo, and Papa Giorgio does it become clear how masterfully Lanzino directs her performers and how wisely she entrusts herself to Verdi’s unrivaled sense of dramaturgy. (…) A successful start to the season.”

OPERN.NEWS

 

“Lanzino is a master at reinterpreting narratives to bring their motives into the present day. An intensely intelligent and moving operatic experience.”

Der Opernfreund

 

“Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata is translated into a brutal media age.

The Italian director Ilaria Lanzino is already known in Nuremberg for her bold reinterpretations. (…) Logical, gripping, coherent, and fully aligned with Verdi’s music. (…)

The production fully deserves the frenzied cries of ‘Brava!’”

Bayerische Staatszeitung

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“The Nuremberg State Opera presents a shockingly consistent new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata. Can one imagine an opera that more urgently demands to be viewed from a contemporary perspective than Verdi’s La Traviata? Hardly, for the stigma of a bad reputation—especially that of a ‘fallen woman’—in an age of supposedly respectable bourgeois morality experiences an exponential intensification in today’s digital-viral times. The notion, as Rossini’s Barber of Seville puts it, that a rumor is merely a ‘little breeze’ seems almost trivial compared to what we now accurately call a ‘shitstorm.’

This is precisely what the Nuremberg State Opera’s new staging of La Traviata explores from the very beginning—with terrifying clarity.”

Art5III