jan 1, 1853 - La traviata

Description:

La traviata, the most radically realistic opera of Verdi's middle-period trio, was based on the play La dame aux camelias (The Lady of the Camellias) by Alexandre Dumas the younger as adapted by Piave. Using a current theatrical hit with a contemporary setting as the basis for an opera was a bold move. Even bolder was his determination to keep the time frame fo the opera as contemporary as that of the drama. Boldest of all was teh chocie of a drama centering on the life and loves of Violetta, a courtesan, in other words, a high-class prostitute. But as Verdi wrote to a friend, it was "a subject of the times."

The timely subject of the play and the opera mirrored actual events that touched deeply personal chords in both the playwright and the composer. Dumas's play was itself adapted from his earlier novel, which was in turn largely autobiographical: He had been in love with Marie Duplessis, the realife Violetta. (Franz Liszt was also in love with her, as was just about everybody else.) As for Verdi, he was living in Paris at the time with Giuseppina Strepponi, a former singer, and some of his family and friends did not approve of their relationship. (They would eventually marry.) It is no surprise that the character of Violetta, the fallen woman of the title, was greatly idealized by Dumas and even more so by Verdi. The plot concerns the love of Violetta (Marie/Giuseppina) for Alfredo Germont (Dumas/Verdi), a young man "of good family," and its thwarting, first by her unacceptability to Alfredo's father and finally by her early death from tuberculosis.

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