Becoming Traviata

Becoming Traviata is a 2012 French documentary film chronicling rehearsals of the Verdi opera La traviata at the AixenProvence Festival. Directed by Philippe Bziat, the film focuses largely on stage director JeanFranois Sivadierfr working with coloratura soprano Natalie Dessay. The films French title is Traviata et nous Traviata and Us.

In the first days of rehearsal, Dessay found the film crew an unwelcome presence, an intruder at an intimate process in which the participants, who dont always know each other, learn to work together. The crew, in turn, worked at a more discreet distance. They shot more than 100 hours of footage, which was edited down to a running time ofhour, 52 minutes. Dessay was happy with the results because it explains what were doing but it stays mysterious. Theres no recipe for what we do.On National Public Radios Deceptive Cadence website, Tom Huizenga wrote that Becoming Traviata is arguably a film for opera geeks. The long stretches of Sivadier explaining blocking, facial expressions and emotional underpinnings will fascinate some and fatigue others. Huizenga and Boston Globe critic Jeffrey Gantz thought the film was less approachable because it neither outlined the operas plot nor revealed how the performance played in front of an audience. But, wrote Huizenga, the films take on collaboration between the director, conductor and performers illuminates the creative process while continuing the good fight to break down barriers between classical music and popular culture. He called La traviata a perfect choice for Bziats aims just as Verdi was writing an opera about everyday people, so does the documentary, which depicts opera with its hair down, bring its audience closer to seeing ourselves, backstage, struggling to bring our own realities to life. ........

Source: Wikipedia