Here’s the storyline of Verdi’s La Traviata (“The Fallen Woman”): Alfredo, a young man from the provinces, has come to Paris and fallen in love at a distance with a woman of rather uncertain reputation named Violetta Valéry, finally getting to meet her face to face at a party she’s giving. He’s the one who leads the festivities with the chorus, “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici”– “Drink from the joyful cup.” (I’ve sung this chorus with my own choir on a program that featured selections from opera–it was great fun.) Then everyone except for Violetta moves into the next room for dancing, but she’s having a coughing fit. (Ominous foreshadowing here.) Alfredo comes back to find her and declares his love in the lovely “Un dì, felice, eterea”– “One day, happy and ethereal.” He leaves, Violetta declares that she must be “sempre libera”–”always free,” but we know she’ll get together with Alfredo when we hear his voice as he goes down the street outside, giving an encore of “Un di.” And that’s the end of Act One.
At the beginning of Act Two, Alfredo has indeed persuaded Violetta to come live with him in the countryside, where they will be content, enclosed in their love for each other. (Doesn’t sound too likely, does it? Violetta doesn’t sound like the kind of girl who’d enjoy feeding the chickens.) But the real world cannot be denied. While the young man is absent, his father, Germont, visits the country retreat, begging Violetta to break up with his son. The scandal of their relationship is causing huge problems for his family, even jeopardizing the engagement of Alfredo’s sister to a respectable young man. Violetta is touched, decides to leave, writes Alfredo a Dear John letter, and departs. Alfredo returns, reads the letter, and weeps. The father sings to his son to comfort him, reminding him of his family home in “Di Provenza il mar, il suol chi dal cor ti cancellò?” – “Who erased the sea, the land of Provence from your heart?”
Now I have to stop here and tell you a story about how I first heard that aria. Come with me back to the days of the early 1970’s, when the TV series The Odd Couple was airing, starring Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison. In real life, Tony Randall was a great classical music fan and used his connections to get a number of big names in that world to make appearances on the show. (Marilyn Horne even showed up in one episode–I’ll link to a clip below.) So in one episode Felix is looking for someone to sing the role of Rigoletto in his little opera society’s production of . . . Rigoletto. (Stick with me here.) Oscar says casually that he plays ball with an opera singer who could maybe do it, Richard Fredricks, who was at the time a soloist with the New York City and Metropolitan Opera houses. The plot has Fredricks sprain his ankle at a baseball game, so Oscar has to stand in for him and lip sync the part, leading to a very funny scene. But what struck me when I first watched that episode was the aria Fredricks sang when he visited Felix’s photography studio. I didn’t know what piece Fredricks was singing, but I was entranced with it. Such a beautiful melody! I couldn’t get it out of my mind. As I look back all these years, it’s hard for me to remember exactly how I tracked down what he was actually singing. He had asked Felix, who was sitting at the piano, “Do you know . . . ?“ and I thought he said something like “di provenzo del mar.” I’m sure that I assumed it was from Rigoletto, and I think I tried to listen to that opera and find it, but the aria wasn’t in it. I’m not sure how I finally figured out that it was from La Traviata.
So that was my first exposure to the tragic story of Violetta and Alfredo and their doomed love. (I guess I ought to mention that the opera ends with her death. Was that a big surprise?) The original plot comes from a novel by Alexander Dumas the younger, La Dame aux Camélias, “The Lady of the Camellias.” She’s called that because she always wears a camellia. The novel was made into a play, and in English the title of the play is usually listed as Camille. But the main character’s name isn’t Camille, it’s Marguerite, actually a type of daisy. Verdi saw the play in 1852 on a visit to Paris and decided to write his next opera using that plot. To add to the whole flower confusion, Verdi or his librettist renamed the heroine, changing her from Marguerite to Violetta.
Dumas’ novel was based on the life of a contemporary woman named Marie Duplessis with whom he had had a brief affair. She was a courtesan, a genteel name for a high-class prostitute, one who was often tolerated as a part of high society and passed from lover to lover. Duplessis apparently acted somewhat as a patron of the arts and held her own salons; like her fictional counterpart she died of tuberculosis at the age of 23.
Here’s a plethora of videos about various ideas in this post. First, a flash-mob version of “Libiamo.” Such a hoot!
The clip of Fredricks singing “Di Provenza” is no longer available on YouTube, so here’s a different one–not a staged version, but what a voice!
And here’s the aforementioned clip of Marilyn Horne playing the role of a shy young woman named Jackie who has a crush on Oscar:
And, to wrap up this long series, here’s Fredricks singing the Rigoletto part while poor Oscar has to mime the action:
© Debi Simons
