The nineteenth century was an opera-mad time. With most composers giving it a shot, simply because, as Willie Sutton famously said, “That’s where the money is.” And fame, too. However many were composed, the operatic field was dominated by two artists who still are at the top of the repertoire: Wagner and Verdi. But that’s about all that these two luminaries had in common. Their differences are legion. It suffices to say that Wagner was not exactly a loyal, solid family man, whereas Verdi stuck with his wife and simple country home to the end of his long life. Wagner was a cosmopolitan man of the world, and Verdi was the only major composer who was a dedicated farmer. There’s more, but the important differences lay in the nature of their operas.
Wagner’s operas and music dramas reflected his consuming interest in Nordic myth, a personal pursuit of unique poetic styles and techniques, and sophisticated operatic theories concerning the relationships in opera between all of its contributory arts. Magic, myth, redemption through love, important orchestral participation, chromatic harmony, elaborate symbolic systems—it’s difficult, indeed, to posit a more personal, unique, and totally different approach to opera in all of its history. Verdi, on the other hand, was a child of Italian operatic traditions—to mention only his immediate predecessors: Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. The music was simpler—carried by memorable melody–the structure straightforward, and the use of the orchestra was masterful, but strictly accompanimental. The plots focused upon real human beings of the real world entwined in deep conflict over the eternal themes of love, jealousy, hate, and power.
By the 1860s Verdi had conquered the world of Italian opera, and was rapidly gaining influence in opera houses all over Europe, even including the formidable Parisian opera establishment. His rousing successes in the 1850s include works still central in the international operatic repertoire: Rigoletto, Il trovatore, Un ballo in maschera, and of course, La traviata. The latter work, based on the famous play, La Dame aux camélias, by Alexander Dumas fils, enjoyed its première in Venice in 1853. Verdi, characteristically mincing no words, coined the change of title to the more descriptive and direct, La traviata, “The Fallen Woman.”
The tale of love, societal prejudice, redemption, and death is a straightforward one. Unlike so many Italian operas of the time, this one is not set in the historic past, but in the present. At least that was Verdi’s intent, a key to his view of his times and its hypocrisies. But the usual censors (aren’t they the same in all times and places?) caviled at the uncomfortable proximity to their audience, and insisted that it be set a century earlier, presumably when morals were not as high as nineteenth-century Venice. Of course, the opera is now most often set as Verdi wished.
Violetta, a popular courtesan, is dying of tuberculosis, but believing that she is in remission, hosts a celebratory party. There she meets a young stranger, Germont, who has admired her from afar and had anxiously followed her illness. He is a hit with the guests at the affair, and boldly visits her in her bedroom during the party after she has a bit of a relapse. He presses his adoration of her, only to be initially rejected. But she reconsiders and gives him her favorite flower, the famous camellia, which he should return to her when it fades. As the party ends, in her recitative, Violetta mulls over the possibility of lasting love, and speculates if Germont is her future , in “È strano! / Ah, fors’ è lui” (How strange . . . perhaps he is the one.). But she thinks of her unfettered life, to live and love as she sees fit, and in a dramatic change of heart, she declares her determination to live as she has, “Sempre libera” (always free). It’s one of Verdi’s most beloved and spectacular arias, a showstopper and demanding of great technical prowess of any coloratura that essays it. It never fails to please.
–Wm. E. Runyan
© 2025 William E. Runyan