"Musical liturgy and visual theatre, Teatro Petruzzelli pays homage to Verdi's masterpiece" by Carlo Coppola
Questo articolo di Carlo Coppola è stato pubblicato in versione originale italiana sul giornale "In Città Giovinazzo" diretto da papàs Antonio Calisi: https://www.incittagiovinazzo.it/2026/04/20/tra-liturgia-musicale-e-teatro-visivo-il-petruzzelli-onora-il-capolavoro-di-verdi/
Երաժշտական պատարագ և տեսողական թատրոն, Teatro Petruzzelli-ն հարգանքի տուրք է մատուցում Վերդիի գլուխգործոցին: Կառլո Կոպպոլայի հոդված.
Sofia Coppola's 2016 staging returns in a sold-out run — and Tigran Melkonyan's Alfredo steals the night
La Traviata is not simply a performance: it is a collective rite, a shared experience that draws the audience in as custodian of a musical memory layered through time. In Italy, no other Verdian opera — perhaps no other opera at all — arouses so deep a sense of belonging, and the Teatro Petruzzelli — a space capable of amplifying the para-liturgical value of the performance in all its complex ritualism — confirms itself as the ideal setting to receive it.
The 19 April performance, sold out as all the other run dates, did not disappoint. The production, originally created in 2016 for the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, retains intact its vivifying force, both visual and symbolic. Sofia Coppola's direction, revived by Marina Bianchi, is distinguished by elegance and dramaturgical coherence, avoiding every aesthetic gesture that might become an end in itself. Nathan Crowley's sets, realised in collaboration with Leila Fteita and suspended between reality and dream, together with Vinicio Cheli's lighting, create atmospheres of intense pictorial suggestion, whilst the Valentino costumes, designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, accompany the progressive deterioration of each character through to the sorrowful final catharsis.
One point demands clarification. La Traviata subjects its interpreters to a particularly demanding ordeal: those in the hall carry with them a stratified musical memory composed of celebrated recordings, performances heard across the years, even simplified or brass-band arrangements. Many spectators know the opera almost by heart, but in different forms — often unconscious, and not always faithful to the score. As a consequence, every iconic moment automatically triggers an inner comparison with ideal models sedimented through listening. It is an involuntary, near-inevitable comparison, one that places singers and orchestra in a paradoxical condition: they measure themselves not only against the written music and its technical and logistical demands, but also against a patrimony of "sonic ghosts" that inhabit the minds of the audience.
On the musical plane, the direction of the Spanish conductor Jordi Bernàcer privileges measure and transparency, placing its trust in a restrained melancholy and in the dilation of time, the better to heighten the effect of pleasure and the audience's sense of identification. The orchestra and chorus, prepared by Marco Medved, delivered a cohesive and refined account.
The cast proved itself solid throughout. Diana Alexe built a Violetta of intensity and technical assurance, traversing the character's multiple emotional states with dramaturgical consistency. Min Kim offered an authoritative and finely shaded Giorgio Germont, free of any rhetorical rigidity: the Korean baritone rendered the moral complexity of the role through measured phrasing and a stage presence that never overwhelmed but rather entered into dialogue, always leaving room for the other.
It was in Tigran Melkonyan, however — in the role of Alfredo Germont — that the evening found its most memorable and authentic moment of grace. The Armenian tenor, whose formation carries within it the heritage of a Caucasian timbre of dark, velvety warmth in the central register, shaped and refined thereafter by the discipline of the Italian school until it attained bright, ringing ascents in the upper voice, demonstrated an interpretive maturity that reaches well beyond sheer timbral quality, remarkable as that quality already is in its own right.
In the first act, the singer avoided every superficial effect in order to illuminate an Alfredo who is authentic: young, impulsive, still capable of believing in an absolute love. The performance was generous and never ostentatious, well governed in technique and rich in dynamic nuance of no common order. In the second act and the finale he revealed still more mature qualities: mastery of the long phrase without loss of expressive tension, and a profound attentiveness to the text, treating each word as a decisive element of the scene. What emerged was the considered understanding that Alfredo is not merely a voice but a fragile, contradictory character, capable of inflicting hurt through weakness. The interpreter believed in this to the last, transmitting to the audience a rare energy — the kind that distinguishes a admirable performance from one that is merely correct or diligent.
The extended final applause for the entire cast and orchestra ratified not only the success of the evening, but the honouring of a shared inheritance: to perform La Traviata with awareness and measure is to honour a tradition that is living — difficult, but living. The Petruzzelli did so, with style.
