Venue(s):
Academy of Music
Manager / Director:
Maurice Strakosch
Max Strakosch
Conductor(s):
Max Maretzek
Price: $2; $3 and 4, reserved seat; $1 family circle; $.50 extra, reserved seat; $5 box or front row of balcony
Event Type:
Opera
Status:
Published
Last Updated:
16 October 2023
“The best performance of Verdi’s well known opera that has ever been given in this city— and this is a bold assertion—took place at the Academy last evening. It was the first opera that gave full and unalloyed satisfaction this season, and we are glad to be able to chronicle that the new tenor, Mr. Capoul, acted and sang for the first time in a style commensurate with the great reputation he brought with him from Europe. Violetta was the rôle in which Mlle. Nilsson first shone as a bright star before the Parisian and London public, and certainly her impersonations of Lucia and Martha pale before the splendor of her ‘Dame aux Camelias’ here. It was a Violetta very different from what we have been hitherto accustomed to. Gentleness and dignity instead of passion, for sensuous languor and effrontery grace and artlessness, and in place of recklessness innocence—why it was quite a revolution in the character of the Lady of Camelias. We have been accustomed so long to those brunette Violettas of Southern origin, who seemed to inculcate only the principle that ‘all the world is folly, except that which is pleasure,’ who think that the heroine should be a naughty, seductive Circe, dissolute and vulgar, that when the new star appeared amid the glare and dissipation of one of those assemblages that must not be specified in polite society she seemed as much out of place as a dove in a council of hawks. It was Violetta shorn of all her naughtiness, Violetta, with fair hair, light blue eyes, calm brow and spirituelle expression. There was not the slightest trace of the Sybarite or Aspasia in this graceful girl that sang the ‘Libiamo,’ but an air of purity was around her that seemed to rebuke the restless wickedness of the disciples of Lais around her. It was pure, unstrained, unspoiled simplicity, and for the ‘Dame aux Camelias’ we must say that it was entirely at variance with received notions. Then came the declaration of the lover, Alfred Germont, and the first act closed with that never to be forgotten ‘Ah! fors e lui,’ which when sung as Nilsson alone can sing it is an idyl of the heart, an apotheosis of love. The second act revealed a sublimity in the character of this love in surrendering it at the call of duty. Never was anguish more powerfully portrayed on the stage than when the unhappy Violetta wrote the fateful letter that was to separate her from her lover. And then came the return to the wild scenes of the Parisian salons in which she was so much out of place, and the deadly insult offered her by Alfred when he flung the purse of gold at her feet. But in the last scene Nilsson was sublime. In her case there was no consumption; it was a clear case of a broken heart. All the hackneyed tricks of little coughs and fainting fits which Bosio and Piccolomini originated were absent here. She died so naturally from the excess of emotion which love, mistaken though it might be, cause in her heart, that no one present thought for the moment of such a commonplace thing as consumption. Even in her death she seemed to rob the grim destroyer of all his power and to enter, guided by him, into a melodious atmosphere, the name of which is eternity. And her voice? A pure soprano sfogato, bright and tender as a May morning, and clear and limpid as a mountain brook, penetrating in its quality more than voices of a stronger and broader kind—how it thrilled the hearts of that immense audience! Before the curtain fell for the last time there was a wall of regret for a lost past on the part of the unhappy lady, the imperceptible approach of death betokened in the frequent attacks of weakness in that frail system and that passionate outburst at dying so young that seemed to rend the very heartstrings. This was the ‘Dame aux Camelias’ of last night, and we have never had her like before. To quote the words of a celebrated French critic, the Lais of this moment may be described in these terms, ‘Her sigh is a melody, her breath a caress.’ Mere words cannot convey fully the effect of Nilsson’s Violetta. It must be seen to be appreciated.