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La Traviata
Giuseppe Verdi
May 17th, 19th, 21st, 22nd - 2005
Violetta, one of Paris' most successful and experienced courtesans, is introduced to Alfredo, son of a wealthy nobleman. Their attraction is immediate and Violetta abandons her cynicism for true love with this impetuous, vibrant young man. However, their happiness is interrupted by the arrival of Alfredo's father, whose words remind Violetta that the world she has entered cannot accommodate a woman of her background. |
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ACT 1
A salon in Violetta’s house It is August. In a festive atmosphere, the action underpinned by a sequence of lively orchestral dances, Violetta and friends greet their guests, among whom is Alfredo Germont, a young man who has loved Violetta from afar for some time. Eventually all sit down to supper and Violetta calls for a toast. Alfredo takes up the cup to sing the famous brindisi ‘Libiamo ne’ lieti calici’, a simple, bouncing melody repeated by Violetta and finally (with judicious transposition) by the entire chorus. A band in an adjoining room now starts up a succession of waltzes and the guests prepare to dance; but Violetta feels unsteady (the symptoms suggest she is consumptive) and begs the others to go on without her. Alfredo remains behind and, with the dance music still sounding, warns Violetta that her way of life will kill her if she persists. He offers to protect her and admits his love in the first movement of the duet: ‘Un dì felice, eterea’ begins hesitantly but builds to the passionate outpouring of ‘Di quell’amor ch’è palpito’, a melody that will reappear later as a kind of emblem of Alfredo’s devoted love. Violetta answers with an attempt to defuse the situation, telling him he will soon forget her, and surrounding his passionately insistent melody with showers of vocal ornamentation. The dance music (which unobtrusively disappeared during the duet) now returns as Violetta playfully gives Alfredo a flower, telling him to return when it has faded. To round off the scene the returning guests, seeing dawn approaching, prepare to leave in the concluding stretta, ‘Si ridesta in ciel l’aurora’.
Left alone, Violetta closes the act with a formal double aria. She muses fondly of her new conquest in the Andantino ‘Ah fors’è lui’, which – like Alfredo’s declaration – begins hesitantly but then flowers into ‘Di quell’amor’. This sequence is then literally repeated (in the style, that is, of a French couplet rather than an Italian cantabile) before Violetta violently shrugs off her sentimental thoughts and resolves that a life of pleasure is her only choice. She closes the act with the cabaletta ‘Sempre libera degg’io’, full of daring, almost desperate coloratura effects. But in the closing stages her melody is mixed with ‘Di quell’amor’, sung by Alfredo from below the balcony.
ACT 2.i
A country house near Paris It is the following January; three months have passed since Violetta and Alfredo set up house together in the country. Alfredo sings of his youthful ardour in ‘Dei miei bollenti spiriti’, an unusually condensed Andante with no repetition of the initial melodic phrase. Annina then hurries in to inform Alfredo that Violetta has been selling her belongings to finance their country life together. Alfredo immediately decides to raise money himself and rushes off to Paris after expressing his remorse in the conventionally structured cabaletta ‘Oh mio rimorso!’ (often cut in modern performances).
Violetta appears and is joined by Giorgio Germont. Their ensuing grand duet is unusually long; typically for Verdi, the formal expansion is concentrated on the opening section of the conventional four-movement structure, the so-called tempo d’attacco. After an initial passage of recitative this first movement involves three main subsections: a kind of lyrical dialogue between the principals. First comes an Allegro moderato (‘Pura siccome un angelo’) in which Germont describes the plight of his daughter, whose forthcoming marriage is threatened by Alfredo’s scandalous relationship with Violetta. After a brief transition, Violetta reveals the seriousness of her illness and protests that Alfredo is all she has in the world (the breathless ‘Non sapete quale affetto’). But Germont is adamant and in ‘Bella voi siete, e giovane’ assures Violetta that she will find others to love. Eventually Violetta capitulates: the second movement of the duet, ‘Dite alla giovine’, begins with her heartbroken agreement to leave Alfredo, and gives ample opportunity for the voices to interweave. The final two movements are relatively brief and conventional: Violetta agrees to break the news to Alfredo in her own way, begging Germont to remain to comfort his son; and then in the cabaletta ‘Morrò! la mia memoria’ she asks Germont to tell Alfredo the truth after her death.
As Germont retires, Violetta begins to write a letter to Alfredo, but cannot finish before her lover appears. He is disturbed by her agitation, but she answers his questions with a simple, passionate declaration of love, ‘Amami, Alfredo’ (the melody that served as the basis for the opera’s prelude) before rushing out. The remainder of the scene might well, of course, focus on Alfredo, but operatic convention requires a formal double aria for the baritone (who has no other opportunity for an extended solo), so Alfredo’s reactions are sandwiched into the transition passages. Soon after Violetta has left, a servant brings Alfredo her letter saying that she must leave him forever, and his anguished reaction is immediately countered by Germont’s lyrical Andante, ‘Di Provenza il mar, il suol’, which conjures up a nostalgic picture of their family home. But Alfredo will not be consoled and at the end of Germont’s cabaletta, ‘No, non udrai rimproveri’, his anger boils over: knowing that she has received an invitation to a party in Paris, he assumes that Violetta has deserted him to return to her old friends.
ACT 2.ii
A salon in Flora’s town house A boisterous orchestral opening, over which Flora and her new lover discuss the separation of Violetta and Alfredo, is followed by a two-part divertissement as a chorus of gypsies (with more than an echo of the musical world of Il trovatore) and then of matadors, dance and sing. Alfredo enters and, to an obsessively repeated motif on the lower strings and wind, begins playing recklessly at cards, apparently uncaring when Violetta appears on the arm of Baron Douphol. As Alfredo and the Baron bet against each other with barely concealed hostility, Violetta repeatedly laments her position in an anguished rising line. Supper is served, and Violetta manages to see Alfredo privately. In answer to his accusations she desperately claims that she now loves the Baron, at which Alfredo calls the guests together and, in a declamatory passage of rising fury, denounces Violetta and throws his winnings in her face as ‘payment’ for their time together. This precipitates the concertato, which begins with a rapid passage of choral outrage before Germont, who has just arrived, leads off the main Largo. This large-scale movement depicts the contrasting moods of the main characters: Germont reproachful and lyrically contained; Alfredo distressed and remorseful with a fragmentary line; and Violetta, privately begging Alfredo to understand her distress with a line which eventually dominates through its simplicity and emotive power. Such is the charge of the movement that the act can end there, without the conventional concluding stretta.
ACT 3
Violetta’s bedroom It is February. The orchestral prelude opens with the idea that began the entire opera, and then develops into an intense solo for the first violins, full of ‘sobbing’ appoggiaturas. In the spare recitative that follows we learn from a doctor that Violetta is near death. To a restrained orchestral reprise of ‘Di quell’amor’, Violetta reads a letter from Germont, telling her that Alfredo (who fled abroad after fighting a duel with the Baron) now knows the truth about her sacrifice and is hurrying back to her. But she knows that time is short, and in the aria ‘Addio, del passato’ bids farewell to the past and to life, the oboe solo adding poignancy to her painfully restricted vocal line. A chorus of revellers heard outside underlines the gloom of Violetta’s isolation, but then, to a sustained orchestral crescendo, Alfredo is announced and arrives to throw himself into Violetta’s arms. After the initial greeting Alfredo leads off the Andante movement of the duet, ‘Parigi, o cara’: a simple waltz-time melody reminiscent of Act 1, in which the lovers look forward to a life together away from Paris. It is significant, though, that Violetta’s attempts at Act 1-style ornamentation are now severely restricted in range. Violetta decides that she and Alfredo should go to church to celebrate his return, but the strain even of getting to her feet is too much and she repeatedly falls back. This painful realization of her weakness precipitates the cabaletta ‘Gran Dio! morir sì giovane’, in which Violetta gives way to a despair that Alfredo can do little to assuage. Germont appears, and a brief but passionate exchange between him and Violetta leads to the final concertato, ‘Prendi: quest’è l’immagine’, in which Violetta gives Alfredo a locket with her portrait, telling him that, should he marry, he can give it to his bride. The movement begins with an insistent full-orchestra rhythmic figure, similar to that used in the ‘Miserere’ scene of Il trovatore and clearly associated with Violetta’s imminent death; later, Violetta develops the simple, intense vocal style that has characterized her in this act. A last orchestral reprise of ‘Di quell’amor’ sounds as the final blow approaches. Violetta feels a sudden rush of life, sings a final ‘Oh gioia!’, but then collapses on to a sofa.
As we have seen, La traviata was written in great haste and its genesis was thoroughly entangled with the creation of Verdi’s previous opera, Il trovatore. Perhaps not surprisingly, there are a series of startling musical resemblances between the two operas. But these similarities are on what one might call the musical surface; in dramatic structure and general atmosphere the two works are remarkably different, in some senses even antithetical. La traviata is above all a chamber opera: in spite of the ‘public’ scenes of the first and second acts, it succeeds best in an intimate setting, where there can be maximum concentration on those key moments in which the heroine’s attitude to her surroundings are forced to change. Perhaps for this reason, the cabalettas, those ‘public’ moments which are so inevitable and essential to the mood of Il trovatore, tend to sit uneasily; we remember La traviata above all for its moments of lyrical introspection.
It is nevertheless easy to see why La traviata is among the best loved of Verdi’s operas, perhaps even the best loved. In many senses it is the composer’s most ‘realistic’ drama. The cultural ambience of the subject matter and the musical expression are very closely related: no suspension of disbelief is required to feel that the waltz tunes that saturate the score are naturally born out of the Parisian setting. And, perhaps most important, this sense of ‘authenticity’ extends to the heroine, a character whose psychological progress through the opera is mirrored by her changing vocal character: from the exuberant ornamentation of Act 1, to the passionate declamation of Act 2, to the final, well-nigh ethereal qualities she shows in Act 3. Violetta – Stiffelio, Rigoletto and Gilda notwithstanding – is Verdi’s most complete musical personality to date. |
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