La traviata

5 things to know about La traviata

1° The toast of Paris

Marie Duplessis was born Alphonsine Rose Plessis in 1824 in Normandy. She moved to Paris at the age of 15 and found work in a dress shop but quickly became aware that prominent and wealthy men found her attractive and enchanting. She became a courtesan and added the faux noble ‘Du’ to her name. She learned to read and write, gaining a reputation as an intelligent, discreet and witty lover. Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis at the age of 23 and her funeral in Montmartre Cemetery in Paris was attended by hundreds of people.

2° Red and white

One of Duplessis’ many lovers was Alexandre Dumas fils. The son of Alexandre Dumas père – author of The Three Musketeers and other classic works – Dumas fils was the same age as Duplessis and an aspiring novelist and playwright when he met the famed courtesan in Paris in 1844. Their brief relationship inspired him to write La Dame aux Camélias, which was published less than a year after Duplessis’ death. The semi-autobiographical novel tells the tragic love story between fictional characters Marguerite Gautier, a demi-mondaine suffering from consumption, and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois. Marguerite is nicknamed 'the lady of the camellias' because while she is menstruating and unavailable for making love she wears a red camellia, and when she is available to her lovers she wears a white one.

3° A visit to the theatre

Giuseppe Verdi’s family situation was not dissimilar to Duval’s. His partner was the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, the mother of at least four illegitimate children. The couple’s unmarried relationship scandalised Verdi’s parents and neighbours in his hometown of Busseto. In the winter of 1851-52, the pair decided to go to Paris. There, they attended a performance of La Dame aux Camélias, which Dumas had adapted for the stage. Verdi knew that the play would be the ideal subject for an opera and immediately began to compose music for what would later become La traviata.

4° Troubled beginnings

Verdi engaged Francesco Maria Piave to write the new libretto and sent the synopsis to Teatro La Fenice in Venice under the provisional title Amore e morte. He was concerned about the city’s censors, who had previously forced him to change parts of the story in Rigoletto. Though La Dame aux Camélias had been an enormous success, its themes were highly scandalous for the time. The theatre received anonymous letters complaining about their plan to put a ‘common whore’ on the opera stage. Verdi was told that because of its risqué subject matter, his new work could not be performed in modern dress and had to be set two centuries in the past. He was frustrated, but a bigger concern of his was the theatre’s choice of soprano for Violetta, Fanny Salvini-Donatelli. Though she was an acclaimed singer, Verdi considered her to be too old and overweight to credibly play a young woman dying of consumption. The audience at the premiere in 1853 agreed and jeered at times during the performance. ‘La traviata last night a failure,’ wrote Verdi to a friend the next day. ‘Was the fault mine or the singers'? Time will tell.’

5° Enduring success

It did not take long for time to vindicate Verdi. The scandal of the first night made the opera a must-see, and the rest of the run at La Fenice proved a financial success. Other opera houses around Europe would quickly take it up. La traviata exposed an open wound of hypocrisy, misogyny and sexual politics at the heart of society. Censors and critics were scornful of the way it which it treated Violetta with pity rather than contempt, but its tragic domestic story and unforgettable music made it a hit with audiences. Today, it is the most performed opera in the world and one of the cornerstones of the operatic repertoire.