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Türkiye is home to dozens of ancient Greek theaters, and like elsewhere in the Mediterranean, tourists always enjoy standing in the middle of the stage, clapping and singing to test the acoustics.
Ephesus is one of the theaters that put ancient Greek architecture to the test by holding performances, and it is always a resounding success; a success that needs to be monitored closely, as these are delicate sites that need special care. This was the case for the eighth year of the Ephesus Opera and Ballet Festival.
I have been visiting Ephesus since I was a child. I am practically a local since my mother is from Tire, Izmir, and our family visits at least twice a year. In the last eight years, we have been intrigued by the posters and the long car park lines for the Opera and Ballet Festival, but our holiday period never coincided with the event. This year we made sure to be there during the festival and managed to see “La Traviata,” in a production by the Samsun State Opera and Ballet.
This year’s festival offering had something for all tastes, from the popular “Aşk-ı Memnu” (“The Forbidden Love”), now an international phenomenon, to “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” to “Swan Lake.” Coupled with the Ministry of Culture’s policy of opening the ancient sites for visits in the evening, the population of Ephesus seems to multiply after the sun sets. At the moment, only half of the Ephesus theater is open to the public, with reconstruction and preservation work going on for the other half. And as such, the venue hosts only half of its capacity, and even then, parking is a severe problem. How did the ancient Greeks manage 2,000 years ago?
When we finally made it to the theater, the stage was lit with floodlights positioned in the upper gallery that obscured the view for many of the holders of the cheaper tickets, like myself. There were also big screens on either side of the stage with English and Turkish subtitles.
La Traviata
“La Traviata” is a Giuseppe Verdi opera based on an Alexandre Dumas novel, in which a young man falls in love with a woman he shouldn’t fall in love with – a forbidden love story that would be very familiar to Turkish audiences and especially “Aşk-ı Memnu” fans. It opens at a fashionable soiree somewhere in Paris, where women are dressed in dazzling ball gowns, just about matching the sartorial excellence of the crowds trickling in and out of open-air wedding venues we have passed on the motorway. We understand Violetta has been sick but is back partying, and tonight she gets a chance to speak to Alfredo alone. They declare their love for one another. Again, a standard girl-meets-boy scenario at Turkish weddings.
Western European nations love to trace their cultural institutions to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and so in this 19th-century Parisian salon, there is a generic white bust of an ancient figure, the likes of whom can be found five minutes down the road by the library. This reproduction in the middle of the real thing creates an exciting mise-en-abyme.
Once you get over the fact that you are sitting (without a cushion or back support) in a thousand-year-old theater and focus on the proceedings on the stage, you get a lesson in the power and texture of the human voice, as Arsen Tekinmirza as Violetta projects her voice up to the top of the theater. It is so high up in fact you experience a different, much cooler climate from the lower gallery. Listening to people sing toward the open sky, where their voice mingles with the sound of the cicadas and barking dogs and then fizzles away, is a completely different experience from being under a dome where the sound ricochets everywhere and lingers well into the second or third bar. This being open to the elements and in some way vulnerable to outside influences makes the human voice that much more heroic, tragic and resilient.
The central innovation of this production is the addition of a “nameless” (named so on the screens in the credits) and mute character who hovers around Violetta, a projection of her emotions. The printed program tactically does not explain her function, but to me, she seems like an inverted chorus. As the ancient chorus spoke and explained the context of the play, “nameless” remains mute, expressing the emotional turmoil that Violetta is going through via facial gestures and movement.
And what turmoil she goes through! While Violetta is ready to sacrifice her wealth and physical well-being for Alfredo, Alfredo’s father makes an appearance and asks her to give up her love for his son, who he believes is destined for great things. Violetta takes this to heart and, in the second half, relapses into tuberculosis like the heroine of a black-and-white Turkish film. The fatal deathbed appears on the stage, as a kind of “machina” of deus-ex-machina in ancient Greek plays, which would enable one of the gods to come to the stage and take away troubled and troublesome characters out of the scene. Here, that god is death, and we see Violetta and her “nameless” extension fight with it for half an hour, but then die anyway because order must be restored and Alfredo must marry a much better woman.
The last half hour of the production took me back to the last time I had seen “La Traviata,” in Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM) in Istanbul, right after the COVID-19 lockdowns had ended. Everyone was very happy to be in a public space again, but Violetta was on her deathbed and half the audience was coughing in conversation. This time, minus the irony of mutual ailing, Violetta’s struggle seems more poignant. The fact that her singing voice disappears into thin air without having the lingering sound of an opera house makes her sound even more fragile.
The ancient theater brings to the fore this mix of strength and fragility like no other space can. As Violetta dies, you can lift your head up and see the constellations in the sky. You are reminded that there is a connection between our lives lived on this green planet and the greater powers at work above us.
