Opera Books
A
BOOK OF OPERAS
THEIR
HISTORIES, THEIR PLOTS
AND THEIR MUSIC
BY
HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
CHAPTER IX
“LA TRAVIATA”
IN
music the saying that “familiarity breeds contempt,” is true only of
compositions of a low order. In the case of compositions of the highest
order, familiarity generally breeds ever growing admiration. In this
category new compositions are slowly received; they make their way to
popular appreciation only by repeated performances. It is true that the
people like best the songs as well as the symphonies which they know
best; but even this rule has its exceptions. It is possible to grow
indifferent to even high excellence because of constant association with
it. Especially is this true when the form — that is, the manner of
expression — has grown antiquated; then, not expecting to find the kind
of quality to which our tastes are inclined, we do not look for it, and
though it may be present, it frequently passes unnoticed. The
meritorious old is, therefore, just as much subject to non-appreciation
as the meritorious new. Let me cite an instance.
Once upon a time duty called me to the two operahouses of New York
on the same evening. At the first I listened to some of the hot-blooded
music of an Italian composer of the so-called school of verismo.
Thence I went to the second. Verdi’s “Traviata” was performing. I
entered the room just as the orchestra began the prelude to the last
act. As one can see without observing, so one can hear without listening
— a wise provision which nature has made for the critic, and a kind one;
I had heard that music so often during a generation of time devoted to
musical journalism that I had long since quit listening to it. But now
my jaded faculties were arrested by a new quality in the prelude. I had
always admired the composer of “Rigoletto,” “Il Trovatore,” and “Traviata,”
and I loved and revered the author of “Aïda,” “Otello,” and “Falstaff.”
I had toddled along breathlessly in the trail made by his seven-league
boots during the last thirty-five years of his career; but as I listened
I found myself wondering that I had not noticed before that his
modernity had begun before I had commenced to realize even what
maternity meant — more than half a century ago, for “La Traviata” was
composed in 1853. The quivering atmosphere of Violetta’s
sick-room seemed almost visible as the pathetic bit of hymnlike music
rose upward from the divided viols of the orchestra like a cloud of
incense which gathered itself together and floated along with the
pathetic song of the solo violin. The work of palliating the character
of the courtesan had be gun, and on it went with each recurrence
of the sad, sweet phrase as it punctuated the conversation between
Violetta and her maid, until memory of her moral grossness was
swallowed up in pity for her suffering. Conventional song-forms returned
when poet and composer gave voice to the dying woman’s lament for the
happiness that was past and her agony of fear when she felt the touch of
Death’s icy hand; but where is melody more truthfully eloquent than in
“Addio, del passato,” and “Gran Dio! morir so giovane”? Is it within the
power of instruments, no matter how great their number, or harmony with
all the poignancy which it has acquired through the ingenious use of
dissonance, or of broken phrase floating on an instrumental flood, to be
more dramatically expressive than are these songs? Yet they are, in a
way, uncompromisingly formal, architectural, strophic, and
conventionally Verdian in their repetition of rhythmical motives and
their melodic formularies. This introduction to the third act recalls
the introduction to the first, which also begins with the hymnlike
phrase, and sets the key-note of pathos which is sounded at every
dramatic climax, though pages of hurdy-gurdy tune and unmeaning music
intervene. Recall “Ah, fors’ è lui che l’anima,” with its passionate
second section, “A quell’ amor,” and that most moving song of
resignation, “Dite all’ giovine.” These things outweigh a thousand times
the glittering tinsel of the opera and give “Traviata” a merited place,
not only beside the later creations of the composer, but among those
latter-day works which we call lyric dramas to distinguish them from
those which we still call operas, with commiserating emphasis on the
word.
That evening I realized the appositeness of Dr. von Bülow’s remark
to Mascagni when the world seemed inclined to hail that young man as the
continuator of Verdi’s operatic evangel : “I have found your successor
in your predecessor, Verdi,” but it did not seem necessary to think of
“Otello” and “Falstaff” in connection with the utterance; “La Traviata”
alone justifies it. Also it was made plain what Verdi meant, when after
the first performance of his opera, and its monumental fiasco, he
reproached his singers with want of understanding of his music. The
story of that fiasco and the origin of the opera deserve a place here.
“La Traviata,” as all the world knows, is based upon the book and drama,
“La Dame aux Camélias,” by the younger Dumas, known to Americans and
Englishmen as “Camille.” The original book appeared in 1848, the play in
1852. Verdi witnessed a performance of the play when it was new. He was
writing “Il Trovatore” at the time, but the drama took so strong a hold
upon him that he made up his mind at once to turn it into an opera. As
was his custom, he drafted a plan of the work, and this he sent to Piave,
who for a long time had been his librettist in ordinary. Francesco Maria
Piave was little more than a hack-writer of verse, but he knew how to
put Verdi’s ideas into practicable shape, and he deserves to be
remembered with kindly interest as the great composer’s collaborator in
the creation of “I due Foscari,” “Ernani,” “Macbetto,” “Il Corsaro,” “Stiffclio,”
“Simon Boccanegra,” “Aroldo” (a version of “Stiffelio”), and “La Forza
del Destino.” His artistic relations with Verdi lasted from 1844 to
1862, but the friendship of the men endured till the distressful end of
Piave’s life, which came in 1876. He was born three years earlier than
Verdi (in 1810), in Durano, of which town his father had been the last
podesta under the Venetian republic. He went mad some years before he
died, and thenceforward lived off Verdi’s bounty, the warm-hearted
composer not only giving him a pension, but also caring for his daughter
after his death. In 1853 Verdi’s creative genius was at flood-tide. Four
months was the time which he usually devoted to the composition of an
opera, but he wrote “La Traviata” within four weeks, and much of the
music was composed concurrently with that of “Il Trovatore.” This is
proved by the autograph, owned by his publishers, the Ricordis, and
there is evidence of the association in fraternity of phrase in some of
the uninteresting pages of the score. (See “Morrò! la mia memoria” for
instance, and the dance measures with their trills.) “Il Trovatore” was
produced at Rome on January 19, 1853, and “La Traviata” on March 6 of
the same year at the Fenice Theatre in Venice. “Il Trovatore” was
stupendously successful; “La Traviata” made a woful failure. Verdi seems
to have been fully cognizant of the causes which worked together to
produce the fiasco, though he was disinclined at the time to discuss
them. Immediately after the first representation he wrote to Muzio: “‘La
Traviata’ last night a failure. Was the fault mine or the singers’? Time
will tell.” To Vincenzo Luccardi, sculptor, professor at the Academy of
San Luca in Rome, one of his most intimate friends, he wrote after, the
second performance: “The success was a fiasco — a complete fiasco! I do
not know whose fault it was; it is best not to talk about it. I shall
tell you nothing about the music, and permit me to say nothing about the
performers.” Plainly, he did not hold the singers guiltless. Varesi, the
barytone, who was intrusted with the part of the elder Germont,
had been disaffected, because he thought it beneath his dignity.
Nevertheless, he went to the composer and offered his condolences at the
fiasco. Verdi wanted none of his sympathy. “Condole with yourself and
your companions who have not understood my music,” was his somewhat
ungracious rejoinder. No doubt the singers felt some embarrassment in
the presence of music which to them seemed new and strange in a degree
which we cannot appreciate now. Abramo Basevi, an Italian critic, who
wrote a book of studies on Verdi’s operas, following the fashion set by
Lenz in his book on Beethoven, divides the operas which he had written
up to the critic’s time into examples of three styles, the early operas
marking his first manner arid “Luisa Miller” the beginning of his
second. In “La Traviata” he says Verdi discovered a third manner,
resembling in some things the style of French oéera comique.
“This style of music,” he says, “although it has not been tried on the
stage in Italy, is, however, not unknown in private circles. In these
latter years we have seen Luigi Gordigiani and Fabio Campana making
themselves known principally in this style of music, called da
camera. Verdi, with his ‘Traviata,’ has transported this
chamber-music on to the stage, to which the subject he has chosen still
lends itself, and with happy success. We meet with more simplicity in
this work than in the others of the same composer, especially as regards
the orchestra, where the quartet of stringed instruments is almost
always predominant; the parlanti occupy a great part of the
score; we meet with several of those airs which repeat under the form of
verses; and, finally, the principal vocal subjects are for the most part
developed in short binary and ternary movements, and have not, in
general, the extension which the Italian style demands.” Campana and
Gordigiani. were prolific composers of romanzas and canzonettas of a
popular type. Their works are drawing-room music, very innocuous, very
sentimental, very insignificant, and very far from the conception of
chamber-music generally prevalent now. How they could have been thought
to have influenced so virile a composer as Verdi, it is difficult to
see. But musical critics enjoy a wide latitude of observation. In all
likelihood there was nothing more in Dr. Basevi’ s mind than the
strophic structure of “Di Provenza,” the song style of some of the other
arias to which attention has been called and the circumstance that
these, the most striking numbers in the score, mark the points of
deepest feeling. In this respect, indeed, there is some relationship
between “La Traviata” and “Der Freischuutz” — though this is an
observation which will probably appear as far-fetched to some of my
critics as Dr. Basevi’s does to me.
There were other reasons of a more obvious and external nature for
the failure of “La Traviata” on its first production. Lodovico Graziani,
the tenor, who filled the rôle of Alfredo, was hoarse, and could
not do justice to the music; Signora Salvini-Donatelli, the Violetta
of the occasion, was afflicted with an amplitude of person which
destroyed the illusion of the death scene and turned its pathos into
absurdity. The spectacle of a lady of mature years and more than
generous integumental upholstery dying of consumption was more than the
Venetian sense of humor could endure with equanimity. The opera ended
with shrieks of laughter instead of the lachrymal flood which the music
and the dramatic situation called for. This spirit of irreverence had
been promoted, moreover, by the fact that the people of the play wore
conventional modern clothes. The lure of realism was not strong in the
lyric theatres half a century ago, when laces and frills; top-boots and
plumed hats, helped to confine the fancy to the realm of idealism in
which it was believed opera ought to move. The first result of the
fiasco was a revision of the costumes and stage furniture, by which
simple expedient Mr. Dumas’s Marguerite Gauthier was changed from
a courtesan of the time of Louis Philippe to one of the period of Louis
XIV. It is an amusing illustration of how the whirligig of time brings
its revenges that the spirit of verismo, masquerading as a desire
for historical accuracy, has restored the period of the Dumas book, —
that is, restored it in name, but not in fact, — with the result, in New
York and London at least, of making the dress of the opera more absurd
than ever. Violetta, exercising the right which was conquered by
the prima donna generations ago, appears always garbed in the very
latest style, whether she be wearing one of her two ball dresses or her
simple afternoon gown. For aught that I know, the latest fad in woman’s
dress may also be hidden in the dainty folds of the robe de chambre
in which she dies. The elder Germont has for two years
appeared before the New York public as a well-to-do country gentleman of
Provence might have appeared sixty years ago, but his son has thrown all
sartorial scruples to the wind, and wears the white waistcoat and
swallowtail of to-day.
The Venetians were allowed a year to get over the effects of the
first representations of “La Traviata,” and then the opera was brought
forward again with the new costumes. Now it succeeded and set out upon
the conquest of the world. It reached London on May 24, St. Petersburg
on November 1, New York on December 3, and Paris on December 6 — all in
the same year, 1856. The first Violetta in New York was Mine.
Anna La Grange, the first Alfredo Signor Brignoli, and the first
Germont père Signor Amodio. There had been a destructive
competition between Max Maretzek’s Italian company at the Academy of
Music and a German company at Niblo’s Garden. The regular Italian season
had come to an end with a quarrel between Maretzek and the directors of
the Academy. The troupe prepared to embark for Havana, but before doing
so gave a brief season under the style of the La Grange Opera Company,
and brought forward the new opera on December 3, three days before the
Parisians were privileged to hear it. The musical critic of the
Tribune at the time was Mr. W. H. Fry, who was not only a writer on
political and musical subjects, but a composer, who wrote an opera,
“Leonora,” in which Mine. La Grange sang at the Academy about a year and
a half later. His review of the first performance of “La Traviata,”
which appeared in the Tribune of December 5, 1856, is worth
reading for more reasons than one:—
The plot of “La Traviata” we have already given to our readers. It
is simply “Camille.” The first scene affords us some waltzing music,
appropriate in its place, on which a (musical) dialogue takes place. The
waltz is not specially good, nor is there any masterly outworking of
detail. A fair drinking song is afforded, which pleased, but was not
encored. A pretty duet by Mme. de la Grange and Signor Brignoli may be
noticed also in this act; and the final air, by Madame de la Grange,
“Ah! fors’ e lui che l’anima,” contained a brilliant, florid close which
brought down the house, and the curtain had to be reraised to admit of a
repetition. Act II admits of more intensified music than Act I. A brief
air by Alfred (Brignoli) is followed by an air by Germont
(Amodio), and by a duet, Violetta (La Grange) and Germont.
The duet is well worked up and is rousing, passionate music. Verdi’s
mastery of dramatic accent — of the modem school of declamation — is
here evident. Some dramatic work, the orchestra leading, follows —
bringing an air by Germont, “Di Provenza il mar.” This is a 2—4
travesty of a waltz known as Weber’s Last Waltz (which, however, Weber
never wrote); and is too uniform in the length of its notes to have
dramatic breadth or eloquence. A good hit is the sudden exit of
Alfred thereupon, not stopping to make an andiamo duet as is so
often done. The next scene introduces us to a masquerade where are
choruses of quasi-gypsies, matadors, and picadors, —sufficiently
characteristic. The scene after the card-playing, which is so fine in
the play, is inefficient in music. Act III in the book (though it was
made Act IV on this occasion by subdividing the second) reveals the
sick-room of Traviata. A sweet air, minor and major by turns,
with some hautboy wailing, paints the sufferer’s sorrows. A duet by the
lovers, “Parigi, 0 cara,” is especially original in its peroration. The
closing trio has due culmination and anguish, though we would have
preferred a quiet ending to a hectic shriek and a doubly loud force in
the orchestra.
Goldsmith’s rule in “The Vicar” for criticising a painting was
always to say that “the picture would have been better if the painter
had taken more pains.” Perhaps the same might be said about “La Traviata”;
but whether it would have pleased the public more is another question.
Some of the airs certainly would bear substitution by others in the
author’s happier vein. The opera was well received. Three times the
singers were called before the curtain. The piece was well put on the
stage. Madame La Grange never looked so well. Her toilet was charming.
The principal incidents of Dumas’s play are reproduced with general
fidelity in the opera. In the first act there are scenes of gayety in
the house of Violetta— dancing, feasting, and love-making. Among
the devotees of the courtesan is Alfredo Germont, a young man of
respectable Provençal family. He joins in the merriment, singing a
drinking song with Violetta, but his devotion to her is unlike
that of his companions. He loves her sincerely, passionately, and his
protestations awaken in her sensations never felt before. For a moment,
she indulges in a day-dream of honest affection, but banishes it with
the reflection that the only life for which she is fitted is one devoted
to the pleasures of the moment, the mad revels rounding out each day,
and asking no care of the moment. But at the last the voice of
Alfredo floats in at the window, burdening the air and her heart
with an echo of the longing to which she had given expression in her
brief moment of thoughtfulness. She yields to Aifredo’s
solicitations and a strangely new emotion, and abandons her dissolute
life to live with him alone.
In the second act the pair are found housed in a country villa not
far from Paris. From the maid Alfredo learns that Violetta
has sold her property in the city — house, horses, carriages, and all —
in order to meet the expenses of the rural establishment.
Conscience-smitten, he hurries to Paris to prevent the sacrifice, but in
his absence Violetta is called upon to make a much greater.
Giorgio Germont, the father of her lover, visits her, and, by
appealing to her love for his son and picturing the ruin which is
threatening him and the barrier which his illicit association with her
is placing in the way of the happy marriage of his sister, persuades her
to give him up. She abandons home and lover, and returns to her old life
in the gay city, making a favored companion of the Baron Duphol.
In Paris, at a masked ball in the house of Flora, one of her
associates, Alfredo finds her again, overwhelms her with
reproaches, and ends a scene of excitement by denouncing her publicly
and throwing his gambling gains at her feet.
Baron Duphol challenges Alfredo to fight a duel. The
baron is wounded. The elder Germont sends intelligence of
Aifredo’s safety to Violetta, and informs her that he has
told his son of the great sacrifice which she had made for love of hint
Violetta dies in the arms of her lover, who had hurried to her on
learning the truth, only to find her suffering the last agonies of
disease.
In the preface to his novel, Dumas says that the principal
incidents of the story are true. It has also been said that Dickens was
familiar with them, and at one time purposed to make a novel on the
subject; but this statement scarcely seems credible. Such a novel would
have been un-English in spirit and not at all in harmony with the ideals
of the author of “David Copperfield” and “Dombey and Son.” Play and
opera at the time of their first production raised questions of taste
and morals which have remained open ever since. Whether the anathema
periodically pronounced against them by private and official censorship
helps or hinders the growth of such works in popularity, there is no
need of discussing here. There can scarcely be a doubt, however, but
that many theatrical managers of to-day would hail with pleasure and
expectation of profit such a controversy over one of their new
productions as greeted “La Traviata” in London. The Lord Chamberlain had
refused to sanction the English adaptations of “La Dame aux Camélias,”
and when the opera was brought forward (performance being allowed
because it was sung in a foreign language), pulpit and press thundered
in denunciation of it. Mr. Lumley, the manager of Her Majesty’s Theatre,
came to the defence of the work in a letter to the Times, but it
was more his purpose to encourage popular excitement and irritate
curiosity than to shield the opera from condemnation. He had every
reason to be satisfied with the outcome. “La Traviata” had made a
complete fiasco, on its production in Italy, where no one dreamed of
objecting to the subject-matter of its story; in London there was a loud
outcry against the “foul and hideous horrors of the book,” and the
critics found little to praise in the music; yet the opera scored a
tremendous popular success, and helped to rescue Her Majesty’s from
impending ruin.
Last updated October 22, 2006