Strakosch Italian Opera: La traviata

“The tender grace and touching pathos which Christine Nilsson never fails to impart to her lyric impersonations were charmingly exemplified last night in her exquisite delineation of the unhappy Violetta. She succeeds thoroughly in raising the part from the rather low plane in which the author first placed it, and where many prima donnas have persistently kept it. The Violetta of Miss Nilsson is as pure and sweet as her Amina or her Linda would be, or as is her Lucia. There is in it nothing to remind one of the indelicacy which certainly invests the Dame aux Camelias, as Dumas described that strange and erratic woman.

 

In the brilliant scene of the first act, Nilsson was vivacious and fascinating, and her brindisi was as bright and sparkling as the bubbles of champagne. In the second act, where the tragic element of the play begins, her duet with Germont betrayed many excellences. In the third act there was a deeper pathos, and a more despairing intensity; but in the last act the lyric actress shone with peculiar force. The aria ‘Addio del passaio’ was sung with a heart-touching tenderness which gave quite a new meaning to the familiar strains, and the death scene, in which there was everything to excite and nothing to repel sympathy, was a fitting conclusion to one of the most graceful and beautiful personations which has ever been witnessed on our lyric stage.

 

The audience seemed to be thoroughly of this opinion, too, for there was no interruption to the close attention paid to the progress of the opera. The attendance was enormous. Every seat was occupied, the dress-circle showed a great variety of elegant toilets, and the Grand Duke Alexis was seated in one of the lower proscenium boxes. Everything combined to make the evening one of exceptional brilliancy.”