‘Nina/Violetta’ Asks "Opera or Motherhood?"

“It’s a two-person play about opera itself and about motherhood,” says Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s Jill-Anna Ponasik.

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Classical Music

Opera and motherhood can be vessels of high drama. Devotion to art and parenting—can the two be juggled successfully? Those are among the questions woven through the next production by Milwaukee Opera Theatre (MOT), Nina/Violetta.

“The play explores how impossible it is to do both things simultaneously,” says MOT’s artistic director, Jill-Anna Ponasik, a woman who has navigated the challenges of doing both. “It’s a two-person play about opera itself and about motherhood” whose protagonist, Nina, has had to choose one or the other. In act one, she comes to an unanticipated and uncanny turning point

Opera buffs will recognize Violetta as the bewitching heroine of Giuseppe Verdi’s canonical La Traviata (1853). In Nina/Violetta, the courtesan’s ghost appears to Nina, a contemporary woman who gave up a promising career in opera to raise a family. The ghost inhabits the New York apartment of Nina’s late mother, who was also a diva, and persuades Nina to sign a Faustian contract putting her husband and children into a “magical sleep,” granting Nina time to return to the stage.

“There’s a big history in opera of dicey contracts,” says Ponasik.

Keeping Opera Alive

Nina/Violetta is written by Chicago writer-actor Monica West, with Chicago pianist-composer Sheela Rameh as music director. West plays Nina and fellow Chicagoan Emily Rohm costars as Violetta. Erin Ortman directs. It’s an unusual MOT production for relying almost exclusively on out-of-towners but Ponasik wanted to keep the original creative team together.

The Violetta of Nina/Violetta is concerned, among other things, about keeping the art form—and her character—alive in a changing world. The many-layered story references La Traviata’s source, the autobiographical novel by Alexandre Dumas the Younger, whose courtesan gave up her child rather than the life she pursued. West’s Violetta is judgmental about Nina’s decision to become a mother and also highly manipulative.

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Bits of La Traviata, pieces of arias, are incorporated into Rameh’s score. However, her music “does not sound like Verdi,” Ponasik insists. “It’s beautiful, harmonic and lyrical with a fairytale darkness. It’s not in sharp contrast to Verdi but it can’t be mistaken for him.” And like a great opera, Nina/Violetta is “magnificently paced, beautifully structured,” Ponasik continues, “with a momentum that drives toward dramatic moments.”

MOT calls their staging a “developmental reading” with few costumes and sparse sets. It’s not the finished Nina/Violetta but more like a house with roof and walls in place but no furniture. A pair of dolls representing the two characters, commissioned from Milwaukee artist April Dejon, may or may not be on stage. “It’s a fully embodied performance,” Ponasik concludes. “You won’t see the scenery. It’s a chance to be close to the words themselves.”

Nina/Violetta will be performed Sept. 16-19 at the Florentine Opera Center, 926 E. Burleigh St. For tickets, visit MilwaukeeOperaTheatre.org. It’s a remarkable coincidence, Ponasik adds, that the Florentine Opera’s season begins with La Traviata only one month later.