The power of opera laid bare

Violetta has just made her ultimate sacrifice -- a wrenching promise to give up the man she loves so his family’s honor can remain unsullied. The illustrious courtesan knows that after today, she will never see Alfredo again. Unaware of her decision, he enters the room where she is writing a farewell note.

Verdi’s music swells, reflecting her anguish.

“Amami, Alfredo,” she cries, spinning out the notes ardently and rushing to embrace him.

“Love me, Alfredo. Love me as much as I love you.”

But what happens when the physical depiction of this climactic outburst is missing, as it will be when “La Traviata” is presented in concert Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl?

“Nothing that diminishes the work,” says John Mauceri, who will be conducting the opera as part of his 13th season as series impresario at the mammoth outdoor showplace.

“Look at it this way,” Mauceri says. “In a staged production, the story may be riveting, the sets evocative, the singers splendid. But without great music, there can be no great opera. So what we do at the Bowl is focus on masterpieces with top singers performing them.”

The result Sunday, he says with the “Traviata” score open before him at his Laurel Canyon studio, will be “a radio show with some visual components -- basically a listening experience.”

“The greatest theater,” he says, “is one that resides in the mind, so if ‘Traviata,’ ‘Boheme’ and ‘Butterfly’ can exist there, you are free of saying, ‘Oh, she’s too old for that role’ or ‘He’s too young.’ The drama is built into the music and carried by interpretive artistry.”

Ironically, Sunday’s Violetta will be Elizabeth Futral, a soprano whom Mauceri calls the Nicole Kidman of opera.”

The two worked together on a 1999 “Traviata” at Opera Pacific. More recently, the raven-haired Futral appeared as Cleopatra in Los Angeles Opera’s production of Handel’s “Julius Caesar.” Fresh from a concert version of “Lucia di Lammermoor” presented by the Metropolitan Opera in New York’s Central Park, she is aware of the challenges of forgoing theatrical presentation.

“When there’s no chair for Violetta to sit in while writing the letter, no table to lean on when she feels faint, it becomes a mental and emotional exercise,” the singer says on the phone from Chicago. “Instead, one must envision the scene and convey it all through the voice.”

But because she has sung Violetta in fully staged performances, Futral says she’s already absorbed the theatrical aspects of “La Traviata.”

“My read of the character, which I’m still trying to deepen, is informed by having worn the costumes and gone through the action,” she says. “So by the time I’m standing in front of the mike, there’s a backlog to draw on.”

What about that capstone moment before the curtain would normally fall, when the terminally tubercular Violetta, reunited with Alfredo, rises up from her deathbed in a sudden, feverish impulse and sings “Oh, gioia” (Oh, joy), only to collapse seconds later? “The truth is,” she says, “I don’t know how I’ll manage that.”

Still, says Futral, “It’s definitely easier, in one way, to do nothing but stand in front of a microphone and sing.”

She also admits to happily putting herself in the hands of the Bowl’s sound engineers.

“Even if I could change my technique, I wouldn’t know how best to change it. So I must trust what I know is right for me and leave the rest to the audio folks.”

Mauceri, for his part, is hard at work with sound and lighting personnel “building scenery out of the imagination” -- deciding how, for instance, to suggest the Mardi Gras street band passing under Violetta’s window in Act 4, and what colors to bathe the stage in at certain junctures.

Such problems aside, Mauceri sees a rash of residual benefits to concert opera.

“Because the show starts at 7:30, when it’s still light, supertitles cannot be used,” he says. “And that’s great, because if you’re reading you’re missing the musical action.”

To compensate, he plans to introduce each act.

What’s more, he’s delighted that some high-concept production won’t be superimposed on Verdi and that a zealous director won’t have tried to fill each bar of music with stage shtick.

“Music is uncapturable to begin with,” he says. “It’s not like a book or a painting activated by a reader or a spectator. It exists only when performed. And because of all the performance variables -- one night to the next, one conductor to another, one singer to another, in all their different moods and states -- you’re going to get only a partial image.

“So I say that concert performance, stripped to its elements but also partial, is as legitimate as any, especially since it cancels out those things that sometimes get in the way of our perception of the piece.”

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‘La Traviata’

Where: Hollywood Bowl,

2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood

When: Sunday, 7:30 p.m.

Price: $3 to $45

Info: (323) 850-2000