Melodrama in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Francesco Maria Piave from the novel La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas son
Produced by Fondazione Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova
Characters and interpreters:
Violetta Valery
Carolina López Moreno
Elena Schirru (14,16,18)
Flora Bervoix
Carlotta Vichi
Annina
Chiara Polese
Alfredo Germont
Francesco Meli
Klodjan Kaçani (14,16,18)
Giorgio Germont
Roberto Frontali
Leon Kim (14,16,18),
Gastone
Roberto Covatta
Barone Douphol
Claudio Ottino
Marquis d’Obigny
Andrea Porta
Dr. Grenvil
Francesco Milanese
Flora’s domestic
Loris Purpura
Giuseppe
Giuliano Petouchoff
Commissioners
Filippo Balestra
Concertmaster and conductor
Renato Palumbo
Director
Giorgio Gallione
Scenes and costumes
Guido Fiorato
Choreography
DEOS
Lighting
Luciano Novelli
Orchestra, Chorus and Technicians of the Opera Carlo Felice Genova
Choirmaster Claudio Marino Moretti
Stage Director
Luciano Novelli
Stage musical director
Simone Ori
Hall masters
Sirio Restani, Antonella Poli, Massimo Salotti
Stage Masters
Andrea Gastaldo, Anna Maria Pascarella
other Choir Master
Patrizia Priarone
Lighting Master
Luca Salin
Master of supertitles
Simone Giusto
Assistant director
Luca Baracchini
Assistant stage and costume designer
Francesca Marsella
Music archive manager
Simone Brizio
Stage director
Alessandro Pastorino
Deputy stage manager
Sumireko Inui
Console Handling Manager
Andrea Musenich
Engineer foreman
Gianni Cois
Foreman electricians/lighting booth
Marco Gerli
Tooling foreman
Tiziano Baradel
Head of audio/video department
Walter Ivaldi
Head of tailoring, shoemaking, make-up and wigs
Elena Pirino
Make-up and hair co-ordinator
Raul Ivaldi
Scenes and props
Fondazione Teatro Carlo Felice
Costumes
D’Inzillo Sweet Mode
Footwear
C. T. C. Pedrazzoli
Wigs
Mario Audello
Supertitles by
Fondazione Teatro Carlo Felice
Opera in brief
by Ludovica Gelpi
La traviata, composed in early 1853, is part, together with Rigoletto (1851) and Il Trovatore (1853), of Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘popular trilogy’. The trilogy is so called because it is characterised by more realistic themes aimed at conveying the marvels and misfortunes of verisimilar and topical characters and situations, a new content dimension compared to Verdi’s previous works and an important premise for the opera’s development towards psychological naturalism. With these three operas Verdi began a new artistic phase, proposing a conception of melodrama with a new and more properly 19th century identity both on the dramaturgical and musical levels.
For La traviata Verdi, on the strength of the success of Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, made an unconventional choice regarding the subject matter. In fact, together with Francesco Maria Piave, he worked on a faithful adaptation of the play La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas’ son, based on the 1848 novel of the same name that was already a European best seller. Dumas was inspired by the story of Marie Duplessis, a famous Parisian courtesan of whom he himself had been a lover; the girl of humble origins had made her way in high society thanks to her beauty, charisma and intelligence, winning the hearts of artists and men of letters, but tragically died of tuberculosis in 1847, at the age of only 23. Verdi’s choice was revolutionary as the subject was set in contemporary bourgeoisie, of which it highlighted moral flaws and hypocrisy. The audience – most of whom had also read Dumas – would be confronted for the first time with a brazenly honest critique of their own moral system. After the first performance, on 6 March 1853 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the opera was criticised and began to circulate in more or less censored forms that aroused Verdi’s indignation. However, the controversial appeal of the opera and the effectiveness of the musical writing deeply affected the public. Soon La traviata became one of Verdi’s most famous operas and, even today, it is still one of the most performed and loved musical theatre titles in the world.
The main themes of the drama are announced by what was originally intended to be the title of the opera: Love and Death. The protagonist embodies both, she is an enterprising woman, one of the most coveted courtesans of Parisian high society, and tragically young she already sees death approaching. Her psychology is complex and told in all its facets, including the feigned lightness of the life of ease she has built for herself, the painful awareness of the fragility of her position in the bourgeois context, her desire for true love and a quiet life, and her religious faith. The other two main characters are also characterised by a fundamental dualism: Alfredo is a young man capable of great passionate impulses and he sincerely loves Violetta, but he is more fragile and naive than she is when it comes to understanding the complex dynamics of the society in which they live, and this prevents him from understanding her fully. Giorgio Germont first represents bourgeois hypocrisy, when he pretends to be kind to Violetta but categorically refuses to allow her name to be linked to that of his son, then possible redemption, when he is confronted with the evidence and the tragic nature of the love between Violetta and Alfredo. Around them moves a motley crew of Parisian nobles and servants, a very strong choral presence always crowded into the interiors of bourgeois houses, to amplify the sense of a manner closed in its most oppressive aspects.
On a musical level, Verdi offers a particularly inspired expressive range. The opera’s prelude is bipartite and anticipates the themes later recurring in the opera of love and death, two antithetical themes united only by the vibrant tension of the strings. The initial theme of death announces the opera’s fundamental tragic nature before the transition to the love theme and then to the festive onslaught of the first act. In the prelude to the third act, the expanded and extended theme of death, now close, is the protagonist – only in the central section of this second prelude, the brighter one that anticipates the moments of faint hope of the third act, is the rhythmic pulse of the love theme resumed, but to a different melody. The introspection of the characters is deepened through music, a central element in revealing to the audience but also to the characters themselves the truth of the feelings at stake. Similarly, the psychological development of the protagonists is emphasised by the different vocalities, Violetta goes from the brilliant colouratura of the first act to the more elegiac tone of the third, Alfredo is asked for versatility in switching from a more ringing expression to a rhythmic declamato and again to a nostalgic tone.
For La traviata, starting with the choice of the subject and continuing with the innovative theatrical and musical elaboration, a consideration by the philosopher Francesco Orestano is more valid than ever, who wrote: ‘What strikes us above all in Verdi is the sincerity of the man and the artist. Everything was frank in him. His life was frank, his art was frank. Pain and joy, torment and ecstasy, serenity and despair, cordiality and anger, self-satisfaction and remorse, everything developed in him, in his nature, in a full and free manner. He could laugh like a deity and cry like a child’.
