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Violetta and her sisters
Women in opera
With a star-studded revival at the Royal Opera House (starring Anna Netrebko, pictured), La traviata has recently been at the top of operalovers’ minds. Verdi’s Violetta is just one of the ‘fallen women’ who have caused a stir on the lyric stage. JULIAN GRANT puts her in context
The courtesan Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis in Paris in 1847 at the age of 23, amidst squalor and debts. Alexandre Dumas fils (son of the celebrated author of Les trois mousquetaires) capitalised on her demise by producing a novel, La dame aux camélias, based on the year-long affair they had started in 1844. The novel soon became a play, and by 1853 an opera – La traviata. As Marie morphed into Marguerite and then Violetta, the reality of her fast courtesan’s life and her untimely end became progressively more idealised: true nobility was to be found in the ‘kept woman’ who had renounced her one true love in order to save his family from scandal.
Violetta is unique in Verdi’s pantheon of sopranos. Of all his heroines, she is a contemporary figure, not historical, mythical, Shakespearian, royal, or a generic peasant girl. So detailed is the characterization that she seems to presage the operatic heroines of the next generation, particularly Massenet’s and Puccini’s ‘little women’, vulnerable and complex, among whom reside several tarts, some with hearts.
Bohemian girls
In 1848, the very year that La dame aux camélias was published Scènes de la vie de bohème also appeared. Henri Murger’s novel of Parisian student life would become the basis for Puccini’s La bohème. Mimi, the seamstress – who shares with Violetta the unfortunate (for an opera diva) handicap of diseased lungs – was supposedly based on a real character; but, her loose morals were sanitised in the book. Puccini’s treatment sentimentalises her to such an extent that her past is conveniently omitted. Her foil, Musetta, on the other hand, is a vintage tart with heart. She is first seen raising hell at Café Momus with an old roué in tow. When she spots her ex-boyfriend, Marcello, the flame is reawakened and they are reunited, only to separate spectacularly a brief act later when someone else takes her fancy. She does redeem herself in the last act, though, by giving the dying Mimì her muff.
Puccini had some bohemian competition. Ruggero Leoncavallo’s one hit, Pagliacci, overshadows the many other operas he wrote, including another version of La bohème, premiered in 1897, a year after Puccini’s. He attempted to capture the more realistic, episodic tone of the novel. Marcello instead of Rodolfo is the lead tenor and Musetta is the mezzo-soprano lead; she is a more impassioned than Puccini’s, but is confusingly upstaged by Mimi, a tarty soubrette who undeservingly retains her death scene – she is not the character we care about. Zazà (1900), also by Leoncavallo, is a…
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