Sunday Classics preview: In "La Traviata," Violetta stands on the brink of life transformation

Virginia Zeani, who'll be one of our Violettas today and tomorrow, reflects -- on her 84th birthday! -- on her first performance of the role, in Bologna on three days' notice in 1948 at age 22. (Later she talks about singing Puccini's Manon with the young Plácido Domingo.)

by Ken

In last night's preview we witnessed the first actual meeting between the Parisian courtesan Violetta Valéry and a charming, innocent young man from (we find out in Act II) the south of France, Provence, a very different sort of man from the ones she's become accustomed to socializing with. When he was introduced to her at they party she was giving, she learned that he had been in love with her for a year, had in fact been doing what we might call stalking her.

And something about him -- not just his dash and good looks, persuasive as they are -- got to her. She tried to dismiss him, in all senses, but wound up sending him off with grudging leave to return the next day. Now the guests have all gone, and Violetta is left alone to process what has just happened.

The stage is set for one of the great showpieces of the soprano literature, but of course it's also one of the great dramatic scenes. In form, it's clearly the old bel canto erea "double aria," or aria and cabaletta -- a normally slow first aria, in which the singer contemplates or deals with a situation or problem, and then, after the introduction of new information or perhaps just a change of thought (in this case it's simply what Violetta would probably think of as "coming to her senses"), a contrasting fast aria in which the singer deals with the revised situation or contrasting thought. It certainly corresponds to a basic human mode of behavior, and here Verdi and librettist Francesco Maria Piave found an opportunity to bring it to about as full a music-dramatic realization as anybody ever did.

(There's some irony here, in that in the next scene both the tenor and baritone in Traviata, Viioletta's new fascination, Alfredo Germont, and his father, Giorgio Germont, have arias with cabalettas, in situations that could plausibly sustain the form, and for whatever reason(s) Verdi doesn't seem to have bought in. Those cabalettas are the weakest numbers in the score, indeed the only less than first-rate music in it. While great singers might make them work -- the baritone cabaletta seems to me on the verge of being workable -- it's not an accident that these numbers were for a long time routinely omitted. Restoring them hasn't necessarily been a gain.)

SIDEBAR: WHY IS ALFREDO'S FATHER SO
SET AGAINST HIS LIAISON WITH VIOLETTA?

The words most often associated with Violetta are "courtesan" and "demimondaine." From the American Heritage Dictionary:

courtesan n. A woman who is a prostitute, especially one whose clients are men of rank or wealth.

A "demimondaine" is defined as "a woman belonging to the demimonde," so let's jump to that:

demimonde n. 1.a. A class of women kept by wealthy lovers or protectors. b. Women prostitutes considered as a group. 2. A group whose respectability is dubious or whose success is marginal: the literary demimonde of ghost writers, hacks, and publicists. In this sense, also called demiworld.

Now Violetta actually has a fiancé, and a baron at that, which makes me wonder whether she's actually a prostitute. Wouldn't you figure that even the most liberal baron would have certain limits of propriety in matters of matrimony? So I'm inclined to 1a, with the powerful odor of dubious respectability from 2.

Note that for Alfredo's father, in his primly middle-class social circle, this would probably be a distinction without a difference, which is one reason "updating" the time period of the opera, as has been done by many too-smart-for-their-own-good directors, seems to me dangerous. I think we need for the stigma attached to Violetta's social status to be powerful enough to set the opera's events in motion.

Why don't we lead off, now, with the English-language performance by Valerie Masterson?

La Traviata: Act I, Violetta, Recitative, "I wonder, I wonder!" . . . Aria, "Is he the one I dream about?" . . . Recitative, "It can't be, it can't be!" . . . Aria, "Give me freedom to be happy"

Valerie Masterson (s), Violetta Valéry; John Brecknock (t), Alfredo Germont; English National Opera Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. EMI, recorded Aug.-Oct. 1980

TO CONTINUE WITH OUR "AH, FORS'È LUI"
AND "SEMPRE LIBERA" PREVIEW, CLICK HERE.

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