La traviata
4 min
Recording
- Act I · PreludeNew York Philharmonic, Arturo Toscanini · 19293:44
Verdi’s Prelude to Act I of La traviata comes before Violetta’s party and sets her high violin music beside the theme of her love song. Toscanini conducts the New York Philharmonic.
Listening notes · joins
- Opening, divided violins
The prelude begins with the violins alone, divided into small groups and marked ppp. They play high, with no bass beneath them. Violas and a solo cello enter later.
- Letter to Emanuele Muzio, 1853
On 7 March 1853 Verdi wrote to Emanuele Muzio about the première in Venice the night before: “La traviata last night a failure. Was the fault mine or the singers’? Time will tell.”
- Love theme, strings
The strings play the broad E major melody that Violetta later gives to Alfredo, “Amami, Alfredo” — “Love me, Alfredo.” She sings it in Act II before leaving him. In the Prelude the tune has no words, and the orchestra accompanies it with repeated chords.
- Melody in cellos and bassoon
The cellos and bassoon play the long melody while the first violins decorate it with quick, detached notes. The clarinet adds a second melodic line.
- Dumas fils’s play, Paris, 1852
In February 1852, in Paris with Giuseppina Strepponi, Verdi saw Dumas fils’s La Dame aux camélias. Eleven months later he told Cesare De Sanctis that his Venice subject was “of the age”, one another composer might shun for its costumes, period and “a thousand other clumsy scruples”.
- Close of the prelude in E major
The phrases shorten. Verdi marks allargando, then diminuendo and morendo — dying away. The first violins continue their repeated notes nearly to the end, and the bass moves from B to E for a soft close in E major before the curtain rises on Violetta’s party.
Joins
- Bass and wind under the love melody
The high violin phrase descends. Regular bass notes and short wind chords set out E major, and the first violins, violas and cellos play the love melody together, marked con espressione.
- The melody passes below the violins
A short cello line links the two statements. The cellos then play the E major melody with the first bassoon, and above them the divided first violins play detached semiquavers. Second violins and violas repeat their chords, and the bass keeps its spaced notes.
- The violin figures stop
The melody contracts into short figures exchanged with the wind. At the allargando the bass reaches B, which prepares the final E major chord. Verdi then marks diminuendo and morendo. The violin semiquavers continue through the softening chords and stop at the last sustained E.