The two operas do share one thing: realism in the way the characters and their worlds are portrayed.
The two fully staged operas that Opera Company of Middlebury is producing over the next two weekends couldn’t be less alike. Giuseppe Verdi’s 1853 work La Traviata tells an enduring love story set in the 18th century and is one of the world’s most frequently staged operas. Xavier Montsalvatge’s Babel 46 explores the struggle for survival in a refugee camp after World War II and is the work of a Spanish composer whose operas are rarely performed in the United States. In fact, Opera Company of Middlebury’s production, performed by its young artists, will be the work’s American premiere.
The two operas do share one thing: a verismo style — a realism in the way the characters and their worlds are portrayed. To pull that off, the singers must also be effective actors. The Middlebury opera’s founding artistic director, Doug Anderson, has a knack for spotting such performers, and they have helped account for the small company’s success over the past 23 years.
The two operas do share one thing: realism in the way the characters and their worlds are portrayed.
This year’s casts for both operas — the three principals in La Traviata and 10 young artists, all of whom will also sing in the Verdi production — were selected from among 350 applicants. A May 24 “Meet the Singers” concert featuring 11 members of the group left no doubt that these artists are among the country’s most promising.
Voices aside, what to do with the ever-popular La Traviata? One would think it impossible by this time to find a new way to tell the story of high-society courtesan Violetta (sung by soprano Avery Boettcher), her lover Alfredo (tenor Jared Esguerra) and his father Giorgio (baritone Andrew Manea), who forbids the relationship. Anderson, of course, thinks otherwise. He’s moving the setting from circa 1700 to the 1920s.
“It’s about sex and a woman who uses her body to survive, so I was looking for a period that has a feel for her sexuality,” he said during a call. The roaring twenties, he continued, citing the New Woman and suffragist movements, “are the first wave of American feminism, really. Women are smoking, drinking in public” — and they’re no longer restricted by cinched and heavily layered clothing. Costume designer Debby Anderson, Doug’s wife, designed “all these slinky dresses” for the production, he said.
Anderson himself designed the set for the Town Hall Theater stage: a pergola, which, he promised, is “so beautiful someone will want to buy it.” Built by technical director Buzz Kuhns, the white, roofless, columned construction is based on outdoor structures that were a fixture at roaring twenties parties, according to Anderson’s research.
Reached three days into rehearsals, Anderson was already focused on the minutiae of acting that will help convey the story’s heartbreak. Meanwhile, the music itself will do major emotional lifting. Its unforgettable melodies and lush orchestration are the province of music director Filippo Ciabatti and an ensemble of 23 musicians.
La Traviata has “more hit songs per square inch than any other opera,” Anderson quipped. “Every eight minutes, you go, Oh, yeah, I know that one.”
While Verdi’s opera is sung completely in Italian (Anderson will, as always, tweak the English supertitles to align with his production choices), Babel 46 is sung in the refugee characters’ own languages of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, English, Hebrew, Ladino, Catalan and — accompanied by a clarinet — sign language. Perhaps the only other example of multilingual extremity in opera is Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence, with nine languages, which premiered just five years ago.
Babel is not all linguistic confusion, though: The characters manage to convey something of their lives to each other, establishing identities and relationships in the confined space of the camp. But when a voice comes over the speaker in French to announce their imminent repatriation and each person is faced with the reality of returning home, their stories begin to unravel.
Catalan composer Montsalvatge’s music is a favorite of Alejandro Roca, artistic director of the Young Artist Program. Roca, a native of Bogotá, Colombia, moved to the U.S. four years ago to take a job at Yale University as a lecturer in voice and opera. He once met Montsalvatge, then in his nineties, while earning a master’s degree in piano performance at the Liceu Conservatory in Barcelona. He also saw a production of Babel there.
Roca said Babel is perfect for the small Doug & Debby Anderson Studio, where it will be staged by Patrick Diamond, an opera professor and director of opera productions at University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. The space is “close, intimate and kind of claustrophobic,” Roca said. “It’s a refugee camp, so there’s the feeling of not being able to leave.”
Opera Company of Middlebury’s Young Artist Program, which Roca is directing for a second year, has become a coveted destination for singers needing stage experience between conservatory training and full-fledged careers. Other similar programs are bigger — Santa Fe Opera, Merola Opera Program in San Francisco and Des Moines Metro Opera are among the best known — but “we try to create a tailor-made experience for each of the singers,” Roca said, whether they need more work with languages, technical ability, stagecraft or acting.
And they’ll be getting something unusual for young artist programs: a U.S. premiere to put on their résumés. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Double Feature | Two new Opera Company of Middlebury productions bring different worlds to life”
This article appears in Animal Issue • 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
