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La Traviata

Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata has three acts and an Italian script by Francesco Maria Piave. The novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, La Dame aux camélias, was adapted into a play in 1852. The main character, Violetta, gave the opera its first name. The premiere took place on March 6, 1853, in Venice's La Fenice Opera House.

Verdi and Piave wanted to set the opera in the then-present as Dumas did, but the people in charge at La Fenice insisted that it be set in the past, around the year 1700. Not until the 1880s were "realistic" productions put on, which was what the composer and librettist had wanted from the beginning. La Traviata has become very popular and is now one of the most-performed operas.

The Story

Violetta is lying in bed, very sick. She finds out that Giorgio told his son the whole truth and what she did for him. Alfredo goes back to Paris to apologize to him. When Alfredo comes, Violetta hopes that love has come back to life. She wants to feel this love but passes out in Alfredo's arms as she has TB.

History of Performance

The audience made fun of the choice of soprano Fanny Salvini-Donatelli to play the lead role of Violetta at times during the premiere. They didn't cast her because they felt she was too old (38 years) and overweight to play a young woman dying of consumption, despite the fact that she was a well-known singer. Verdi had tried to get the manager of La Fenice to cast a younger woman in the role before, but he was unsuccessful. Still, the audience applauded and cheered at the end of the first act. In the second act, though, they started to dislike the show, especially after the baritone Felice Varesi and the tenor Lodovico Graziani sang.

Philips-Matz says it was a coincidence that an Italian version of the play La Dame aux camélias was being put on not far from La Fenice.

In its new form, the opera was first performed with Spezia-Aldighieri at the Teatro Real in Madrid on February 1, 1855. On May 4, 1855, it was performed in Italian in Vienna, and on October 25, 1855, it was performed at the Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona. On May 24, 1856, it had its world premiere at London's Her Majesty's Theatre in the Italian language. It was first performed in the United States on December 3, 1856, in Italian at the Academy of Music in New York by the Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company.