Erik Grendahl / Recenze

La traviata continues to fascinate us some 170 years after its inception partly because it presents the viewer with no clear-cut heroes or villains. Its principle characters are a lot like the rest of us, imbued with glaring defects and endearing, even transformative strengths: in roughly equal measure. Francesca Zambello’s 2018 production, which opened at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City on November 5th, rides on these subtleties, and its naturalistic, even humane approach stays in the mind long after the curtain falls. (Its haunting opening and closing set-pieces, which I will not reveal here, nudge this familiar love story toward the macabre.)