Bringing Back the Past: The setting of La traviata

By John Rizzo

In 1851, the censors appointed by the Austrians for Venice tried to force Verdi to make wholesale changes in his La maledizione, a totally completed opera. The obstinate Verdi defended his work against the censors on every point, far more vigorously than they were used to. In the end, only a few changes were made to the opera that was based on Victor Hugo’s play, Le Roi s’amuse, which had been banned in 1832 after just one performance. Basically, Verdi had to scrap his original title (he renamed it Rigoletto), he changed the opera’s antagonist’s identity and the setting. Thus King Francis I of France became the Duke of Mantua. In 1853, the same Venetian censors were faced with yet another bout with Verdi, this time over his opera version of Dumas fils’ novel and play, La Dame aux camelias. Still bruised from their previous encounter with the composer, the censors quickly let the work go forward with only a change in title from Amore e morte to La traviata.

On a roll of sorts, Verdi then demanded that the Teatro Fenice management stage the play in contemporary dress. As the impresario Lasina put it, "The Signor Maestro Verdi desires, demands and begs that the costumes for his opera La traviata should remain those of the present day…He declares that he is ready to assume responsibility for this as regards the public and that he will get the press to print the reasons…" But a few days later Verdi’s librettist Piave wrote to the director of the Fenice, Guglielmo Brenna, "As for the costumes Verdi agrees very much against his will that the period be put back in time…"

Obviously, the time setting was a very important aspect of the drama for the Fenice. Even for the great Verdi the management refused to stage a tragic opera set in contemporary times, even if the composer himself wrote a published disclaimer. As for Verdi, he surely must have thought it was an important enough artistic issue for him to write and publish an explanation for an artistic decision. Anyone with even a casual acquaintance with the composer’s attitude towards theater directors and the public must recognize that this was indeed an extraordinary offer. He was never willing to do anything like this before or since. So what was the big deal about the contemporary setting? Actually, what Verdi wanted the Fenice to do was to ignore a theatrical precedent that went back over two thousand years, namely, that tragedies should be set in the past.

When the Medici camerata invented opera in the late 1500s in order to resurrect Greek Tragedy, they considered everything they knew about the subject, especially the section of Aristotle’s Poetics that deals with tragedy. Interestingly, Aristotle remains silent on the issue of a tragedy's time setting. We can assume that the celebrated philosopher simply took it for granted that everyone knew that tragedies were to be set in the past. Indeed, all but one Greek Tragedy is set in antiquity. The one and only exception is The Persians by Aeschylus. (It’s easy to see why this one is exempted from the customary practice of setting serious dramas in the past. In the play, the recent stunning victory of the Greeks over the Persians at Salamis is celebrated by the poet, who himself was a hero of the battle.) The tradition continued through the Shakespeare tragedies and histories and all serious operas up to the late 19^th century.

Getting back to Aristotle, there were several clearly stated maxims that were scrupulously adhered to by the creators of opera for almost four centuries. Opera, for example, like tragedy, unfolds as action (something that Wagner often forgets). Music, poetry and spectacle are important elements of both tragedy and opera. The heroes or heroines of tragedy come from prosperous families – in opera these are almost always aristocrats or nobles. Finally there is this singular concept of the purging of the emotions of pity and terror – the catharsis – which, according to Aristotle was the main purpose of tragedy, and an idea that has been debated continuously for centuries. If, before the ottocento, the emotions of pity and terror of operagoers were purged, it is impossible for us today to understand how. Unless there was something in the improvisations of the vocalists that excited the darker feelings of the spectators, catharsis was not a goal of opera of the time. As the 19^th century progressed, however, the audience was drawn emotionally deeper into the drama of opera. This was indisputably an object of Verdi and then Puccini and his verismo rivals.

By the time of Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Puccini, operas could be set in the present. Leoncavallo, in his Pagliacci, proclaimed that the point of his opera was to depict un squarcio di vita (a slice of life) with characters of common origin. This is hardly based on the Aristotelian model, but for us today all the works of the 19^th century composers seem set in the past. From simple observation, over a period of many years, the operas that seem to strike their audiences most directly, that is, judging from the amount of tears they elicit, are Verdi’s La traviata (which, of course, is now always set in the mid-19^th century) and Puccini’s La bohème and Madama Butterfly. More than many other operas that have very dark stories, audiences tend to pity the heroines of these operas and are terrified by their realistic deaths.

But the emotional reaction we display for those operas that are over a hundred years old pale in comparison with certain movies of the Post-Modern period or an operatic-style musical like West Side Story. With these "tear-jerkers" audiences are far more demonstrative emotionally than with any opera. Another thing to consider is that with the Verdi and Puccini operas we mentioned, the effect on the audience may truly be defined as "cathartic." People’s darker emotions are genuinely purged and they feel better for the experience. But we should note that with some of the other "realistic" contemporary films, people are likely to become downright depressed, and this is certainly not a goal either of tragedy or opera.

Much of what Aristotle wrote about in the Poetics, especially his admonitions about catering to the extremes in character or plot development, come from that uniquely classical Greek embrace of the Golden Mean, which could be articulated as "all things in moderation." Perhaps this is the root of the constraint against a contemporary setting in tragedy. If the emotions are assaulted too violently, then no immediate good can come from it. This is a difficult problem, because there is no denying the artistic quality of works like West Side Story or other works that are so emotionally draining for audiences. Yet we can understand the reluctance of producers for thousands of years to allow contemporary settings in serious theatrical works. Verdi, who never in his lifetime would see his La traviata staged in contemporary dress, may have come to accept this. And although we cannot conceive of this masterpiece staged in the 17^th century as it was originally, for us it remains as a classical work, a tragic drama set in the past.