Violetta & Alfredo’s Escape

After completing a year’s residency at ENO and having had the privilege of attending several performances of Verdi’s Traviata, directed by Peter Kontwitschny, I set to work on this woodcut, a small etching and two paintings. I wanted to shift the pictorial narrative of the opera from Paris and The Seine to The Thames and the outskirts of London while also being inspired by Hiroshige’s Cherry Trees in full bloom at Arashiyama from his Places in Kyoto series. After finding Verdi’s storyline too painful to bare, where Violetta, a courtesan with a heart is turfed out of a loving suburban sojourn with her lover Alfredo by the bourgeois morals of French society, rather a lot of 21st century revisionism shaped these images! No moralising father getting in the way, no societal conformity holding them back, here Violetta and Alfredo are escaping, lickety spit in their outboard skiff, into their future together, for as long as it may last.- TH

After completing a year's residency at ENO and having had the privilege of attending several performances of Verdi's Traviata, directed by Peter Kontwitschny I set to work on this woodcut, a small etching and two paintings. I wanted to shift the pictorial narrative of the opera from Paris and The Seine to The Thames and the outskirts of London while also being inspired by Hiroshige's Cherry Trees in full bloom at Arashiyama from his Places in Kyoto series. After finding Verdi's storyline too painful to bare, where Violetta, a courtesan with a heart is turfed out of a loving suburban sojourn with her lover Alfredo by the bourgeois morals of French society, rather a lot of 21st century revisionism shaped these images. Here Violetta and Alfredo are escaping, lickety spit in their outboard skiff, into their future together, for as long as it may last - TH