"The production’s staging was equally skilled. In her program notes, stage director Kaley Karis Smith writes that as a woman, Violetta is “denied the agency to live her life as she would like in Parisian society,” so she must make “courageous, selfless, and passionate” choices. Karis Smith, too, makes apt and telling choices. She moves ensembles gracefully around the Grand’s not-so-large stage, her blocking assured and inventive. But she also inserted small, almost imperceptible staging touches—Alfredo caressing Violetta’s glove, or curtains that subtly billow in a fresh country breeze and then go limp as despair overtakes the heroine—that subtly amplified this tale."