La Traviata at Festival Opera: Festival Opera, with Michael Morgan as artistic and music director, stages opera in a way that the original meaning of the word becomes apparent. Each artistic element of the production has its own place, accompanies the rest on an equal footing: singing, orchestration, acting, set, spectacle. And with this production of Traviata, dance reassumes its importance in operatic spectacle as well. Mark Foehringer, who has excellently stage directed the show, is a splendid ballet choreographer; the dancers from his Mark Foehringer Dance Project in San Francisco tear up Flora's party in Act II with wonderful gypsy and toreador numbers. And a brief, masked Carnival rout outside the window of the dying Violetta--with an early winter morning Paris dimly glowing--shows the influence of the director's years in Sao Paulo.
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