The good and the evil

Part of the success of La Traviata since its premiere in 1853 has had to do with its realistic approach to the subject matter. Verdi and Cammarano set the action in Paris, the only city in which, according to nineteenth-century imagination, a prostitute and a member of the gentry could move in together. In addition, Violeta dies of consumption. Before this operatic death, sopranos used to die of sorrow, commit suicide or be killed. In contrast, La Traviata holds a mirror up to its audience and shows the illness of the protagonist from the beginning of the piece to her theatrical death at the end of act 3. It is thus impossible not to recall images of friends and relatives who have died in a similar way, which is one of the reasons why staying dry-eyed at the end of a good Traviata is so difficult.La Traviata also has, however, a deeply…