Future opera singers are easily identified at birth due to their multi-octave crying and graceful bows as they emerge from the womb. Check out how far these tiny miracles have come with today’s Groupon for tickets to Minnesota Opera's production of La traviata at The Ordway in St. Paul. Choose from these options:

• For $50, you get one main-floor seating ticket for Wednesday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m. (up to a $190 value).
• For $75, you get one main-floor seating ticket for Friday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m. (up to a $190 value).
• For $75, you get a main-floor seating ticket for Sunday, March 13 at 2 p.m. (up to a $200 value).

Minnesota Opera transports audiences into the romantic, opulent, and dangerous world of eighteenth-century Parisian high society with the opera classic that inspired the feature film Moulin Rouge!. Led by Georgia Jarman, La traviata tells of the descent of a courtesan who must repress her love for a younger man and her obsession with anything in a ruffled collar. The opera—featuring such timeless arias as the intoxicating opener "Libiamo Ne' Lieti Calici" and the tender "Un Di, Felice Eterea"—is sung in Italian with a translation projected above the stage for those following along from their seats. Audience members choosing not to spend their night at the opera reading can simply listen to the soaring score of Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece, which perfectly captures the passion and underlying sadness of its world of beauty-obsessed libertines, much like a dove's song captures the feeling of putting your toe socks on the wrong feet.

Minnesota Opera is considered one of the most exciting opera companies in the country and specializes in staging works from the bel canto era, rather than the less popular yell canto era. Seats are on the main floor in a premium location for sight lines, so you’ll be able to comfortably look on in awe as high-pitched voices shatter monocles in even the loftiest board-game tycoon's balcony.

Reviews

The Star Tribune and MinnPost extol Minnesota Opera's recent performance of Roberto Devereux:

• Hence the Minnesota Opera's vivid production, which taps deeply into the currents of jealousy, guilt, remorse and grief that run throughout the piece, may strike even Donizetti devotees as revelatory. – Larry Fuchsberg, Star Tribune
• During last Friday’s opening-night performance, [soprano Brenda] Harris seared the heavens with a blazing performance that left her visibly exhausted during final bows. – Camille LeFevre, MinnPost