I have been to see Opera North's new production of La Traviata which was simply superb. I learn from the programme (which has risen 25% in price since last season!) that this is the most popular of operas and I am not particularly surprised because it has it all: top tunes, completely bonkers story and a heroine who dies of consumption while singing her heart out. I have a feeling that I wrote something very similar in my review of La Boheme not that long ago and so we shouldn't be surprised to find that work at number three in the same list. When ON get round to reprising Manon and/or Manon Lascaut then I shall write the same again; for some reason TB in kept women tickled the creative juices in composers.
The programme also tells us that, according to Anthony Powell, one of the characters in the background of Béraud's 'La Madeleine chez le Pharisien' was Dumas
fils. The relevance of this is of course that his autobiographical novel La Dame aux Camelias was the basis of Piave's libretto plus that the model for Mary Magdalen was a well known
grande horizontale herself.
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| Scorda l'affanno, donna adorata, |
So, if Dumas was Alfredo then who are we? I suspect that I spent much of my parental life as Giorgio Germont, but perhaps now in my mid-life crisis I am actually Violetta herself.
Soffre il mio corpo.
Ma tranquilla ho l'alma.
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