Very often at the beginning of a great success and huge popularity, stands a failure. Such is the case of La Traviata , the 18th opera of Giuseppe Verdi, and the last of the magnificent three, including Rigoletto and Il Trovatore . While working on Il Trovatore , in 1852, during a visit to Paris the composer sees the play La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas-son. The story of the rejected by the society and her beloved, courtesan Violetta Valéry, the story of her personal tragedy and the reproach towards the society’s guilt and cruelty, is largely biographical for Dumas-son. Among the prototypes of the characters are the well-known Parisian traviata (here I would like to remind, that this is not a proper name, but a derogative for a fallen woman) Marie Duplessis, with whom the writer had an affair, and probably Giorgio Germont, has something of the character of Dumas-father and his authoritarian behavior towards his son with regard to Duplessis… The play, originally a novelette, scandalizes the society back then with its “amoral” story, and with the very fact that center of attention is a “harlot”. Thus, Dumas breaks the pact of silence surrounding the secrete pleasures of the bourgeoisie, unveiling their dark, tragic shadow. Verdi finds a sought after contemporary plot, which coincides with his order from Teatro La Fenice, Venice. The opera must be completed by March 1853, and Verdi and his librettist Francesco Maria Piave start frantic work in Sant'Agata. As already mentioned, the premiere is scandalous. There are different reasons for that: the unsuitable for the role of a consumptive courtesan plump and blooming diva Fanny Salvini-Donatelli, the indisposed Alfredo and the unsuitable Giorgio Germont; the resentment and the shock from the “outrageous” script, the modern setting and costumes. After the premiere and until the mid 1880s, the opera is set in historical environment, shifted back “during the time of Cardinal Richelieu”, a fate, which also befalls A Masked Ball , though not for moral, but for political reasons. Verdi writes to his friend Emanuele Muzio " La Traviata last night was a failure. Was the fault mine or the singers'? Time will tell."
Time clearly tells and makes its decisive corrections in the evaluation of the new opera. The composer also makes his corrections, before the new staging, a year later, again in Venice, this time in Teatro San Benedetto: the place of the disaster becomes also the place where the triumph begins. Madrid, Barcelona, New York, London, Paris… Although the outcries against the plot do not stop, they gradually give way to the admiration to the music. And also, as some of the modern critics point out: It is not clear why the “immorality” of La Traviata causes such anxiety, and why is it worse than what is happening on the stage of Don Carlos , for instance.
The story of Verdi’s La Traviata is the story of Cinderella – from maid to princess. Here, however, the miracle is brought not by a fairy godmother, but by the score itself.
