La traviata

• Verdi wrote La traviata for the 1853 Carnival season in Venice.¹
• Verdi agreed to the project in April of 1852, and decided to work with librettist Francesco Maria Piave, but it was not until November that they decided upon a subject: an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas fils’ play La dame aux camélias, which had premiered early that year.²
  • Piave also collabored with Verdi on Macbeth, Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra and La forza del destino.³
• Due to the controversial subject matter of Dumas’ play (centering on a courtesan as a sympathetic character), the Venetian censors insisted the title be changed from Dumas’ original title, and that the opera be set in the 18^th century – even though Verdi’s wish had been for it to be performed in modern dress, which would have been very unusual in a 19^th -century opera performance.⁴

“[It is] a subject of the times. Others would not have done it because of the conventions, the epoch and for a thousand other stupid scruples.” 

Giuseppe Verdi, on La traviata, in a letter to Cesare de Santis, January 1, 1853⁵

• Synopsis from The Metropolitan Opera 

1. Roger Parker, “Traviata, La,” Grove Music Online (2002), accessed May 25, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.org/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000005794. 
2. Ibid.
3. “Fracesco Maria Piave,” The Royal Opera House, accessed May 25, 2021, http://www.roh.org.uk/people/francesco-maria-piave.
4. Parker, “Traviata, La,” Grove Music Online.
5. Quoted in Ibid.