Program Notes
Traviata was first performed in the Teatro la Fenice, Venice on March 6, 1853.
In 1844 it was suggested to Verdi that he compose an opera based on Victor Hugo's Marion Delorme . His answer, `I know the subject you suggest. The heroine is a character I don't like. I don't like prostitutes on the stage'.*
In 1852 Verdi saw La Dame aux Camélias in Paris. After the performance he commented that the subject was ?ready and surely effective.? What happened to Verdi in those eight years that changed his mind? Between 1844 and 1852 he had taken up with Guiseppina Strepponi, ?a sophisticate, cultivated woman, whose past life (which she was quietly trying to live down) had points in common with that of the Dumas heroine, Marguerite (who Piave and Verdi renamed Violetta). Perhaps the lesson learned by Giorgio Germont, that you cannot judge anyone based on their appearance or their outward behavior, is the lesson learned by Verdi. A discovery that behavior can be dictated by circumstances and not necessarily by immoral instincts much have come as a shock to the brilliant composer. Thank goodness it did for from that lesson we have a masterpiece which even from its failed opening night went on to great success around the world.
Here is a partial list of its openings around the world:
- 1855 - Madrid, Vienna, Malta, Portugal, Rio De Janeiro
- 1856 - London, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Moscow, Dublin, Mexico, New York, Paris
- 1857 - Santiago, Hamburg, Budapest
- 1858 - Bucharest
- 1859 - Zagreb
- 1860 - Amsterdam, Melbourne
- 1861 - Brussels
- 1862 - Prague
- 1868 - Stockholm, Christiania (Oslo)
- 1869 - Cairo
- 1872 - Lemberg (Poland)
- 1876 - Helsinki
- 1877 - Havana
- 1887 - Copenhagen
- 1910 - Sofia
- 1915 - Tallinn
- 1919 - Yokohama
- 1920 - Kaunas (Lithuania)
- 1923 - Tel Aviv
From the World Wide Web we found some amusing anecdotes about Traviata. Here are two:
IN BERLIN THE ONE WHO BREAKS PAYS
Geraldine Farrar (1882-1967), the day after Traviata's performance in which she broke a glass at the end of the Toast Scene in the first act, was asked to pay a 25 pfennig bill.
PHTISIS AND GASTRONOMY
At the first Traviata representation in Venice, as Dr. Grenvil sung that the illness was going to kill Violetta shortly (?la tisi non le accorda che poche ore?), the audience started laughing as, judging from her size, the primadonna Fanny Donatelli Salvini was hardly prone to consumption.?
* The information was taken from William Weaver's book Seven Verdi Librettos.
