

Opera companies would not comply, insisting on setting the story in the early 18th century. Verdi was adamant that the opera be set in the present day (that is, the 1850s), with modern costumes. The heroine is a fallen woman who earns redemption through sacrifice-a notion that was somewhat risqué at the time-although not forbidden by censors. The scale is intimate and bourgeois, not heroic or noble. La traviata’s subject and setting were novel for opera in the middle of the 19th century. Verdi called the night a fiasco, yet he did not allow himself to be overly distressed, writing to a conductor friend, “I do not think that the last word on La traviata was uttered last night.” Within two months he was vindicated: the revival that opened May 6, 1853, at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice, with more suitable singers and a few small revisions in the score, was an unqualified success. When La traviata premiered, audience members openly mocked the idea that she could possibly be a desirable courtesan, let alone one wasting away from tuberculosis. Unfortunately, she was 38 years old and overweight. Of the primary cast members, only the soprano who played Violetta (Fanny Salvini-Donatelli) was adequate as a singer. La Fenice had been clamouring for a new work although the theatre would supply funding and performers, Verdi was afraid its singers would not do the opera justice. The composer had already read the novel and had begun to conceive of an opera based on the story.

Verdi attended the play in 1852 in Paris, where he was spending the winter. Like Violetta in the opera, Duplessis had conquered Parisian society with her wit, charm, and beauty, but her reign was a brief one-she died of tuberculosis in 1847 at age 23.
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