La traviata

October 1, 6, 8, and 10, 2009, at 8 pm
Matinée October 3 at 3 pm

Inside Verdi's Time

• Censorship of La traviata
• The Demi-monde
• The Librettist: Francesco Maria Piave
• The Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
• Consumption: The Romanticization of a Disease

Censorship of La traviata

By putting a prostitute on stage and treating her sympathetically, Verdi and his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, courted controversy, not only with the public, but from official censors. Before la Traviata could premiere at Venice's La Fenice, the libretto required approval from the theatre management, the mayor of the city, and the Austrian Department of Public Order. Verdi had a penchant for choosing subjects that the censors saw as seditious and immoral. To settle the inevitable disagreements, he would have to either negotiate changes to the libretto or shop around for a less restrictive venue.

One of the problems came in Alfredo's Act 1 love song to Violetta, Un dì, felice, eterea. It was bad enough for the hero to be expressing ardent passion to a prostitute, but the aria ended with the incendiary phrase Croce e delizia al cor (The torment and delight of my heart.). Croce could also mean Cross and in the context of a love song to a prostitute, evoking Christ's crucifixion seemed blasphemous. The censor urged Verdi to change croce to a synonym, pena (pain). Verdi refused.

Even when the libretto survived the Venetian premiere more or less intact, the battles were replayed in other cities. For a performance in Bologna, the censors required Libiamo to be rewritten and did change Croce e delizia to pena e delizia.

Verdi managed to get La traviata approved, but only after the setting was moved back 150 years to the Paris of Louis XIV and the title changed from Amore e Morte – Love and Death – to the more judgemental La traviata (The Woman Who Strayed or The Fallen Woman).

The moralistic attitude of the day was summed up by Felice Varesi, the first Germont, who sniffed, The main character is a kept woman or rather a common whore of our own time who died in Paris not very long ago. (Varesi was also miffed that his part in La traviata was neither as large nor as heroic as he wished – he had previously created the title roles in Verdi's operas Rigoletto and Macbeth.)

The Demi-monde

Verdi's heroine was a member of the demi-monde (half-world), that luxurious, shadowy world where respectable men from polite society (le monde) were entertained by women who were definitely not considered respectable. The demi-mondaines – or courtesans – lived extravagantly on gifts and cash provided by their various lovers – for as long as their beauty lasted.

The term demi-monde was actually coined by Alexandre Dumas, fils, in his third play, an 1855 work called Le Demi-Monde, which is considered his finest dramatic work and a model of the 19th century comedy of manners. The play depicts the attempts of Suzanne D'Ange, a demimondaine, to achieve social rehabilitation – to re-establish herself in respectable society by marrying a young man who is unaware of her past. But Olivier de Jalin, one of her former lovers, knows her all too well and schemes to rescue the naive young man from the clutches of this adventuress. Suzanne is the flip side of Violetta: heartless, scheming, pragmatic, and self-interested. Intrigue, forgery, and a duel ensue. And a new word is born, amusingly defined by Olivier:

The glamourous life of a demimondaine was a financial and social tightrope; there was no job security, and legitimizing a relationship through marriage was quite simply out of the question. Verdi's compassionate portrayal of such a woman startled and disturbed the people of his own time – and created a character whose courage and generosity continue to fascinate and inspire.

The Librettist: Francesco Maria Piave

Verdi first worked with the librettist Francesco Maria Piave in the 1844 opera Ernani, and together they collaborated on ten more operas over the next 18 years: I due Foscari, Attila, Macbeth, Il corsaro, Stiffelio, Rigoletto, La traviata, Simon Boccanegra, Aroldo, and La forza del destino .

Piave was not only a librettist, but a journalist and translator. He was resident poet and stage manager at La Fenice in Venice and later at La Scala in Milan. His expertise as a stage manager and tact as a negotiator served Verdi well over the years, although Verdi bullied him mercilessly. During the efforts to have Rigoletto approved by the censors, the brunt of which fell to Piave, Verdi wrote to him:

Nevertheless Piave and Verdi were friends as well as collaborators, and after Piave suffered a stroke in 1867, which left him paralyzed and unable to speak, Verdi helped to support his wife and daughter and paid for his funeral when he died nine years later.

The Composer: Giuseppe Verdi

1813 was a fine year for opera lovers as two giants of the operatic world were born: the German Richard Wagner and the Italian Giuseppe Verdi.

Giuseppe Verdi dominated Italian opera for half a century with 28 operas that include some of the best known in the repertoire, among them Nabucco, Macbeth, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, A Masked Ball (Un Ballo in Maschera), Don Carlos, Aïda, Otello, and Falstaff.

Verdi was not only a very popular and successful composer, but an astute businessman and producer, an active and committed farmer, a hero of the Italian nationalist movement, a member of the first Italian Parliament, and a generous philanthropist.

Verdi's operas remain as popular today as when they first appeared and form the core of today's standard repertoire. Many of the tunes from his operas are familiar even to people who know nothing of opera.

Youth
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was born in October 1813 in the small village of Roncole, about 65 miles southeast of Milan in the province of Parma in Italy. At the time, Italy was made up of several small states, most ruled by foreign powers. Parma was occupied by Napoleon's army, and Verdi's original birth certificate is French, with his name registered as Joseph Fortunin François.

The area around Roncole was farming country. Verdi's parents ran a tavern and a grocery store and leased land and houses which they sublet to tenant farmers.

Young Verdi showed an early interest in music and was encouraged by his father, who bought an old spinet piano and sent him to the church organist for lessons. Soon Giuseppe was substituting as organist at the town church.

He was also an altar boy. Once when he was about seven, his attention wandered during Mass, and the priest knocked him down. The child responded by cursing the priest, "May God strike you with lightning." Eight years later, the priest was killed when lightning struck a nearby church, killing four priests, two laymen, and two dogs. Verdi delighted in retelling this story. Perhaps it shaped his fascination with the power of Monterone's curse in Rigoletto, an opera that Verdi originally titled La Maledizione (The Curse).

When Verdi was ten, his father sent him to the nearby city of Busseto for further musical training. He stayed in the home of Antonio Barezzi, a local merchant and music enthusiast and gave singing and piano lessons to Barezzi's daughter Margherita, whom he would later marry. He also studied composition with Ferdinando Provesi, the local organist, choirmaster, teacher at the music school, and leader of the amateur Philharmonic Society orchestra. Verdi became Provesi's protégé and assistant, playing organ, composing, arranging and copying music and conducting rehearsals.

At the age of 18, with financial support from Barezzi, Verdi went to Milan to apply to the Conservatory. Although Milan is now part of Italy, at the time, it was under Austrian occupation, and a passport was needed for travel between Busseto and Milan. Although he was rejected by the Conservatory, Verdi stayed in Milan to study counterpoint with Vincenzo Lavigna, an opera composer who had played for many years at La Scala, Milan's renowned opera house.

In 1836, having returned to Busseto, Verdi married Margherita Barezzi, accepted the position of maestro of the Busetto Philharmonic, and composed his first opera, Rocester, which he later renamed Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio.

The Verdis' daughter Virginia was born in 1837, but died the following year. In 1839 Giuseppe and Margherita moved back to Milan with their little son, Icilio Romano, who died shortly after.

Verdi had tried without success to have Oberto performed in either Parma or Milan, but in 1839, thanks to the recommendation of the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, Bartolomeo Merelli, the impresario at La Scala, finally agreed to present Oberto. The opera was successful enough to persuade Merelli to offer Verdi a contract to write more operas.

While Verdi was working on his next opera, a comedy called Un Giorno di Regno, his wife died. The deaths of his entire young family within such a short time left him devastated. Although he completed Un Giorno di Regno, it was a failure, and Verdi resolved never to compose again.

Early operas
It took two years for Merelli to persuade Verdi to compose another opera. The biblical story of the Israelites' captivity in Babylon eventually captured Verdi's imagination, and in 1842 Nabucco made its triumphant premiere with Giuseppina Strepponi in the lead role of Abigaille. Verdi became a celebrity overnight, not least because the Italian audience identified with the Israelites, another people who were subjugated by foreign powers. The opera's Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, Va pensiero was sung in the streets of Milan and became an unofficial Italian national anthem.

Verdi was suddenly an inspirational figure in the Risorgimento, the movement toward a free, united Italy.

He was also now in demand as an opera composer and began what he called his "years as a galley slave,' cranking out opera after opera, feeding the insatiable operatic appetites of theatres and audiences throughout Italy and in Paris and London.

Between 1843 and 1850 he composed and often directed productions of 13 new operas, including Ernani, Macbeth, and Luisa Miller. By 1850, Verdi was the leading composer of opera in Italy and one of the most successful in all of Europe. His works, tuneful, highly dramatic, often with political overtones, captivated audiences. They also brought prosperity to Verdi, to his Italian publisher Giovanni Ricordi, (and to succeeding generations of the Ricordi family, including son Tito and grandson Giulio) as well as to numerous impresarios and agents.

During this time Verdi had kept in touch with Giuseppina Strepponi, the soprano who had recommended Verdi's first opera and starred in his second. By 1846, ill health had forced Strepponi to retire from singing. She and Verdi began working closely together in Paris in 1847, and Strepponi, with her inside knowledge of the theatrical and musical world, became Verdi's devoted and able collaborator. Over the next 50 years, until her death in 1897, she helped him in business and musical matters and handled negotiations and disputes with agents, impresarios, censors, and colleagues.

She also became his mistress. This relationship caused a scandal among Verdi's family and friends, who were appalled by her reputation – she had several illegitimate children – and by the fact that she and Verdi lived openly together for several years before finally marrying in 1859.

The high point of Verdi's "galley years" came with his "big three" – RigTrovTrav, the three operas that are his most popular. Rigoletto premiered in 1851 in Venice; Il trovatore was launched in Rome in 1853, followed six weeks later by La traviata in Venice. While both Rigoletto and Il trovatore were immediate hits, La traviata was at first less of a success.

Verdi called the premiere of La traviata a fiasco; it wasn't actually an abject failure – it did well enough at the box office, and Verdi had to take several bows during Act 1. But he was disappointed that censors had insisted on unceremoniously forcing his cutting-edge contemporary work to time-travel a century and a half into the past. He was also none too pleased with the singers. The soprano, Fanny Salvini-Donatelli, sang well, but was plump enough to elicit laughter as she portrayed a frail consumptive in Act 3. The tenor, Lodovico Graziani, went hoarse in the second act, and the baritone, Felice Varesi, put little heart into his performance, grumpily complaining about both the subject matter ("the main character is a kept woman or rather a common whore") and the smallness of his own role (as the first Rigoletto and Macbeth, he felt that Germont was a step down!)

Dealing with Censorship
Despite Verdi's popularity and the rapidity with which he churned out hit after hit, writing and producing the operas was anything but a smooth process. In particular, Verdi had constant battles with censors. Each opera was commissioned for a particular opera house, and each libretto had to be approved by the appropriate authorities, who, given Italy's fractured state, varied from city to city, and could include church authorities as well as Austrian and French officials. Opera was a popular and prominent entertainment, and censors were at pains to make sure that operas were morally and politically inoffensive. What would satisfy the censors in one jurisdiction would not pass in another.

Both Rigoletto and La traviata premiered at the Teatro La Fenice, which was in Austrian-controlled Venice. (Austria ruled much of northern Italy during the mid-19th century). A libretto in Venice required approval from the theatre management, the mayor of the city, and the Austrian Department of Public Order.

The opening of Rigoletto had to be delayed while Verdi and his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, battled with the Venetian censors. The play on which Rigoletto had been based, Le roi s'amuse (The King Amuses Himself) by Victor Hugo, had opened in Paris two decades previously, in 1832, played for one night, and been promptly banned as obscene and politically subversive. The play was based on the life of the French King Francis I, who had been safely dead since 1547. However, Hugo's King Francis was a little too much like the current King, Louis-Phillipe, who had survived an assassination attempt just before the play opened. The censors were not amused and shut the play down. Despite a lawsuit by the furious playwright, the ban on performances remained in place for fifty years, even though the printed version of the play was available. It was not until November 22, 1882, that Le roi s'amuse could finally be seen again in Paris – a quarter century after Verdi's Rigoletto first played Paris.

Rigoletto was finally staged once Verdi and his librettist Francesco Maria Piave moved the action from France to Mantua and changed the title from La Maledizione (The Curse) to Rigoletto (these changes were much more minor than some that had been proposed, including getting rid of Rigoletto's hump and the sack in which Gilda's body was placed).

La traviata too had to be altered to please the censors. Fresh from the epic battle with the Venetian censors over Rigoletto, Verdi and Piave could not have been surprised that their sympathetic portrayal of a prostitute would again raise hackles. Verdi managed to get La traviata approved, but only after the setting was moved back 150 years to the Paris of Louis XIV, thus avoiding the uncomfortable realities of Verdi's contemporary setting. The censors wanted it safely dated in the past. They also insisted that Verdi change his title from Amore e Morte – Love and Death – to the more judgemental La traviata, meaning The Woman Who Strayed or The Fallen Woman.

In the case of Verdi's 1859 opera Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball), no compromise could be reached with the censors in Naples. The opera's plot was based on the 1789 assassination of the Swedish King Gustavus III in Stockholm. In the face of the censors' adamant refusal to allow the assassination of a king to be shown on stage, Verdi withdrew the opera and offered it to Rome. The papal censor was satisfied once Verdi had changed the setting to 17th-century Boston and transformed the King of Sweden into the Count of Warwick.

Italian Politics
Given the times and Italy's political situation, the inflexibility of the Austrian censors in Naples was understandable. There had been an attempt on the life of Napoleon III in Paris in 1858, and an opera on the assassination of a ruler might give the populace ideas. Revolt was in the air. The Risorgimento, the movement to unite Italy, was in full swing, and war between the nationalists and Austria was imminent. Verdi himself was a popular figure among the nationalists. Not only did his operas appeal to patriots, but his very name was an acronym for the revolution. The slogan Viva VERDI became code for Vittorio Emanuele, Re D'Italia (Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy).

Victor Emmanuel was the king of Piedmont and a prime candidate to be leader of a united Italy. Piedmont, which had remained independent of Austria during the 19th century, allied with France and went to war against Austria in 1859, conquering some, but not all the provinces of Italy. Over the next decade, in a series of campaigns, bits and pieces were added on to Italy, but as early as 1861, unification was sufficiently underway that the first Italian parliament was established. Verdi himself was elected to this parliament, and Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed King of Italy. In 1866, when Italian government forces allied with Prussia against Austria to conquer the last remaining territories under Austrian control, Verdi contributed money and guns for the troops. In 1874, King Victor Emmanuel decreed him a lifetime Senator. Truth be told, Verdi was not a particularly active statesman. He showed up at the Senate to take his oath and worked on getting government subsidies for the theatre.

The Later Operas
During these intensely political times, Verdi was also intensely creative; between 1851 and 1871 he wrote some of his greatest operas, beginning with the RigTrovTrav big three, along with Simon Boccanegra (1857), Un ballo in maschera ( 1859), La forza del destino ( 1862), and Don Carlos (1867), and culminating with the spectacular Aïda (1871), the grandest of grand operas, notorious for being the Opera With Elephants.

As part of the celebrations surrounding the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the Khedive (a Turkish Viceroy who ruled Egypt) Ismail Pasha built a new opera house in Cairo. The inaugural performance in the opera house was Verdi's Rigoletto. The Khedive also commissioned Verdi to write an opera with an Egyptian theme specifically for the new Cairo Opera House. This was to be Aïda, which premiered spectacularly in 1871 and has dazzled the world ever since.

At the premiere, there were 300 people on stage, and the audience of dignitaries and Egyptophiles included the khedive and his harem. The conductor was Giovanni Bottesini, also a composer and a double bass virtuoso. In his enthusiasm for the opera, Bottesini went beyond the call of duty and financed a menagerie of animals for the Triumphal March in the second act, including 12 elephants, 15 camels, and assorted zebras, giraffes, lions, ostriches, jackals, baboons, and rodents. Only the elephants and camels were trained well enough to perform; the other animals died of neglect, apparently because Bottesini forgot about them.

After the success of Aïda, Verdi decided to retire from writing operas. He was already well off, and his fee and royalties for Aïdamade him quite wealthy. At the age of 58, he was happy to devote himself to his farm in Sant'Agata while occasionally composing or revising and producing some of his earlier works. Verdi had bought the farm at Sant'Agata in 1848 and moved there with Strepponi in 1851. Over the years it had been a sanctuary and a workplace, not only for composing, but for farming. He remodeled the house and expanded the farm, participating actively in the farm work along with his tenant farmers.

Although Verdi is best known as an opera composer, he did write other music, most notably the monumental Requiem of 1874. After the death of the eminent opera composer Gioacchino Rossini in 1868, Verdi had proposed that Italian composers each contribute a section to a Requiem Mass in Rossini's honour. This was done, but the complete mass was not performed during Verdi's lifetime. Several years later, in 1873, Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian novelist and poet, died, and Verdi decided to use his Libera me as the starting point for a Requiem Mass honouring Manzoni. Verdi's complete Requiem was performed at the cathedral in Milan, on the first anniversary of Manzoni's death.

Some critics charged that the Requiem was too operatic and not sacred enough. The German conductor and composer Hans von Bülow called it "Verdi's latest opera, though in ecclesiastical robes." But composer Johannes Brahms called it a work of genius. Certainly it is a stunningly dramatic, profoundly emotional work; in particular the section called Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) captures the horror and terror of Judgement Day.

Verdi's Final Years
Sixteen years after his "retirement," the 74-year-old Verdi premiered his next opera, Otello, based on Shakespeare's play. Verdi had a profound admiration for Shakespeare, and his publisher Giulio Ricordi and composer-poet Arrigo Boito, with Giuseppina Strepponi's support, were able to persuade Verdi to take on this project. It was followed by another opera inspired by Shakespeare, the comedy Falstaff (1893). Both were acclaimed, and many consider them Verdi's finest operas.

Verdi also worked during his so-called retirement on philanthropic projects, founding a hospital and establishing the Casa di Riposo, a home for retired musicians in Milan. Verdi purchased land for the Casa di Riposo in 1889 and began construction of the house in 1896. He saw the Casa di Riposo as a way to provide for musicians less fortunate than himself. In his will, Verdi left the building and grounds and all the royalties from his compositions to the Casa di Riposo, which still exists, serving as a home for singers, dancers, and other musicians, as well as visiting music students.

Giuseppina died in 1897. Verdi then lived at the Grand Hotel in Milan, finding companionship with retired soprano Teresa Stolz, whom he had known for some 30 years. Rumours were that they had long been lovers; Stolz had also performed much of Verdi's music and sang Aïda in the 1872 Milan premiere.

Verdi suffered a stroke on January 21, 1901 and died six days later. He was buried in Milan at the Casa di Riposo. His funeral was a national event, and thousands lined the streets, singing "Va, pensiero," the famous chorus from Nabucco. Among the mourners were such great composers as Rossini, Donizetti, and Puccini.

Consumption: The Romanticization of a Disease

Operatic heroines tend to die: they are stabbed or they stab themselves; they take poison, throw themselves from ramparts or cliffs, or ride their horses into flames. Less violent, but still dramatic, is death by consumption – a fate shared by Violetta in La traviata (1853), Antonia in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann (1881) and Mimi in Puccini's La Bohème (1896). In fact La traviata and La Bohème are two of the three most frequently performed operas in North America, making consumption a strikingly popular reason for a soprano`s final aria.

The romanticization of consumption is one of the fascinating by-ways of 19th century art and literature.

Consumption is the old-fashioned name for the acute, active form of tuberculosis, a contagious bacterial disease that has plagued humans for millennia; the Greeks called it phthisis (pronounced THĪ-sis to rhyme with crisis).

In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder (AD 23 - 79) recounted numerous treatments for tuberculosis:

Tuberculosis was called consumption because it seemed to consume people from within, with a bloody cough, fever, pallor, weight loss, and long relentless wasting. It was also known as the White Plague, and is believed responsible for 20% of the deaths in 17th-century London and 30% of those in 19th-century Paris.

The contagious nature of the disease was not recognized until 30 years after Verdi wrote La traviata. In 1882, Robert Koch discovered the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. Once it was realized that TB was caused by a germ and that getting close to infected people could be fatal, the romantic allure of the disease faded away – but not before Puccini's La Bohème made explicit the connection between poverty and ill health. Tuberculosis is associated with crowded, unhealthy living conditions, with prisons, and with homelessness, conditions which allow easy transmission of the bacteria from person to person.

However, in the early and mid 19th century, people thought the disease was hereditary or a divine punishment, or a sign of artistic genius, and there was a burst of romantic lore around consumption. The disease developed a certain cachet thanks to the prominence of some of its victims, its lingering nature, and the current ideals of beauty, which matched the ethereal, wasted appearance typical of someone with the disease.

In his memoirs, Alexandre Dumas, père, father of the author of La Dame aux camélias, wrote cynically:

Among the many illustrious victims of consumption were the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson; Thomas Mann, author of The Magic Mountain, a literary classic that used a sanatorium as its background; the Brontë sisters; the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning; and the composer Frederic Chopin.

Perhaps the most iconic victim of consumption was John Keats, the great romantic poet who died from TB at the age of 25. It was Keats who wrote "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. His early death was an incalculable loss to literature and art.

Another Romantic poet, the supremely self-indulgent Lord Byron, is reported to have said, How pale I look! – I should like, I think, to die of consumption . . . Because then the women would all say, 'See that poor Byron – how interesting he looks in dying!'

In his book Verdi with a Vengeance, William Berger explains that consumption was the most fashionable terminal illness one could get in those days, giving the victim a frail beauty and an aura of irresistible doom. It was the nineteenth century's verison of "heroin chic."

Consumption was in many ways the AIDS of the 19th century – a wasting disease that ravaged promising young lives, including a generation of artists.

During the 20th century, improved living conditions and the development of antibiotics reduced mortality rates and made TB far less of a threat, particularly in the prosperous western world. However, the TB bacillus has continued to mutate and evolve, developing drug-resistant strains. The disease is still very much with us.

In its 2008 fact sheet on TB, the World Health Organization reports that more than 2 billion people, equal to one-third of the world's population, are infected with TB. There were over 9 million new active cases in 2006, and 1.7 million people died of the disease that year. About one in ten of those infected with the TB bacillus eventually develop the active disease, which, if left untreated, kills more than half of its victims. One out of four TB deaths is now HIV related, and tuberculosis is the world's greatest infectious killer of women of reproductive age and the leading cause of death among people with HIV/AIDS.

One way of trying to make sense of such tragedy is to transmute it into art. Making art of the ways we die, immortalizing the dead, is a way of imbuing senseless loss with meaning.

The Black Death that carried off millions in Europe during the 14th century is now known to us mostly through art and literature – such as Boccaccio's great story cycle The Decameron and, some say, the nursery chant Ring around the Rosy. TB took its place in that tradition, with the romanticization of consumption and the celebration in music and literature of the beautiful young lives it destroyed. And exactly 100 years after Puccini's heroine Mimi died of consumption, an adaptation of La Bohème called Rent brought the romantic tragedy of death by consumption into a 20th century context in which Mimi is dying of AIDS.

Inside La traviata

• Inside the Libretto
• Inside the Music
• Inside Verdi's Time
• Inside the Production
  
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• Newsletter (PDF)

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Photograph of Giuseppe Verdi, ca. 1850. Photographer unknown.

 

Caricature of Alexandre Dumas fils by André Gill, Cover of La Lune, March 24, 1867

 

Francesco Maria Piave

 

Portrait of Margherita Barezzi, first wife of Giuseppe Verdi by Augusto Mussini

 

Portrait of Giuseppina Strepponi, second wife of Giuseppe Verdi