Jeunesses Musicales presented the opera La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) in an open-air production in the courtyard of Weikersheim Palace on nine evenings in July 2005.

Market Square in Weikersheim, 2005 (with La Traviata poster)

These biennial opera productions, in the odd-numbered years, are almost always chosen from the world’s twenty or so most popular operas. La Traviata at this time (in the 2004/2005 season) was the fourth most-often-performed opera, with 354 performances worldwide, as tabulated by the operabase website. More recently, in 2018/2019, La Traviata topped the list with 795 performances, followed by Mozart’s Magic Flute, Puccini’s La Bohème and Bizet’s Carmen.

Strolling in the Palace Garden before the opera

The cast for La Traviata in Weikersheim was very international, as always, but a unique aspect this time (at least at the performance I saw on Tuesday, July 26) was that all three of the leading roles were sung by Koreans — one of whom was especially impressive, namely Ga-Seul Son as Violetta.

The orchestra this time was the National Youth Orchestra of Spain, and the chorus was the State Youth Chorus of Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.

Stage and audience

The stage was made of five large containers, of the type used on ocean-going container ships. This made for some nice visual effects and rapid changes of scene, but I think the young singers would have sounded better if they hadn’t been singing from inside those metal boxes.

Applause after the opera

For their bows after the performance, the singers and conductor stood in one of the five containers, the lower middle one just above the orchestra.

My photos in this post are from 2005. I revised the text in 2019.

See more posts on operas by Giuseppe Verdi.
See more posts on Weikersheim, Germany.