Welsh National Opera’s production of Verdi’s La traviata will soon be returning to the stage, but did you know that its first ever performance in 1853 was considered a disaster? Let’s take a closer look at what made its opening night a failure and other unsuccessful opening nights.
Verdi’s La traviata is an all-time favourite and is about a young courtesan, Violetta, who falls for Alfredo and abandons her glamourous life in Paris to live with him. Its first performance took place on 6 March 1853 at Venice’s famous La Fenice opera house, where members of the audience jeered at Fanny Salivini-Donatelli, who thought she was too old to play a young courtesan dying of consumption. The two singing the roles of Germont father and son, Felice Varesi and Lodovico Graziani, were also subject to the audience’s scorn and the opening night turned into an unmitigated failure.
The Bartered Bride
Smetana’s Czech opera The Bartered Bride was first performed in the Provisional Theatre in Prague on 30 May 1866. Smetana himself conducted the first performance which was poorly attended; largely owing to reasons that included it being both a very hot day and a public holiday, and the threat of war between Prussia and Austria which caused a lot of anxiety in Prague. The reception to the opera was indifferent and ticket sales failed to cover costs of the performance, forcing the director to pay Smetana’s fee with his own money.
Antony and Cleopatra
To celebrate the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House in New York, Samuel Barber, one of America’s most renowned composers, was commissioned to write a new opera, Antony and Cleopatra. Based on Shakespeare’s tragedy, the production was grand and elaborate, featuring 22 principal singers and a company of 400 performers on stage. The opening performance on 16 September 1966 was badly received by the press and the performance’s excess was greeted without enthusiasm by the audience. The opera was never performed again by the Met even though Barber later said that the music was among some of the best he’d ever composed.
Expectations were high for Puccini’s new opera Madam Butterfly after the fantastic successes of his previous operas La bohème and Tosca. The opera’s first performance at Milan’s La Scala opera house on 17 February 1904 was a complete disaster. The music failed to capture the audience’s emotions, with some of the most heart-wrenching arias such as Butterfly’s Un bel di ending not in applause, but in complete silence. The final scene’s depiction of the dawn was interrupted by farmyard noises from the audience, and many other moments in the opera were booed, jeered and whistled.
We are confident that David McVicar’s award-winning production of La traviata won’t suffer the same fate as these famous first performance disasters(!), having received rave reviews when it last took to the stage during our Autumn 2018 Season. Don’t miss its return this Autumn, opening in Cardiff on 21 September, later touring to Llandudno, Bristol, Plymouth, Birmingham, Milton Keynes and Southampton until 25 November.