Violetta for ever. The long absence and the ghost of Visconti’s unforgettable Callas

As in a story by Buzzati, a ghost haunts La Scala: Maria Callas. She is no longer a menacing spectre, but she is there. Whenever La Traviata is performed, the spectre of ‘La Divina’ is there, somewhere, lurking. It is a memory that almost none of those present can now cherish, but the myth does not end with memory; rather, it lives on through stories, impressions, and public and private legends. La Scala has its own literature, perhaps yet to be written in its entirety, its own epic in which certain figures take precedence over others: the ballerina Fanny Elssler, the soprano Adelina Patti, Arturo Toscanini, Renata Tebaldi, Luchino Visconti and, of course, Callas. But the story begins a long time ago, when Maria Theresa of Austria was still around, when Napoleon passed through, when the Austrians returned; the theatre has always stood there, with its almost unassuming sobriety, witnessing the Five Days, and then the cannon fire at Bava Beccaris, Mussolini’s rallies, the strikes of the ‘Red Biennium’, the sombre elegance of the party hierarchy, the Allied bombs, the austere post-war period when Callas herself made her debut there, and then 1968 and the ‘Years of Lead’. Every premiere, every revival, every new production is a potential clash, an anticipation, a promise to be kept or broken. Now that the 300th performance of Verdi’s opera since its La Scala debut in 1859 took place last Wednesday – the prima donna was Paolina Colson, Alfredo was Ruggero Sirchia – the ritual naturally repeats itself. The production is the one commissioned by Riccardo Muti in 1990, directed by Liliana Cavani, with sets by Dante Ferretti and costumes by Gabriella Pescucci. Back then, Violetta was played by Tiziana Fabbricini; today, it is the American star Nadine Sierra. The conductor is Michele Gamba, the choreography is by Micha Van Hoecke, and the chorus master is Alberto Malazzi. Of the three hundred performances of La Traviata in La Scala’s history, one hundred bear Cavani’s signature – that is, a third. The reason is that prior to this production, which premiered in 1990, Violetta and Alfredo had not set foot in the theatre for twenty-six years – that is, since 1964.

This is where the ghost of the Greek soprano and the stubbornness of her so-called widowers come into play. The story is curious, colourful – a true melodrama within a melodrama. Moreover, controversy has surrounded La Traviata ever since its premiere in 1853 – not at La Scala, but at La Fenice in Venice. Contrary to popular belief, and despite a visual tradition that likes to depict Verdi’s handsome silver beard silhouetted against the porticoes of Piermarini’s theatre, the relationship between the composer and the Milanese theatre was by no means idyllic, and the blame lay, for the most part, with the impresario who ran La Scala from 1829 to 1850, Bartolomeo Merelli, a man from Bergamo with a highly reckless approach to financial management and a moral character bordering on that of a filibuster. Ever since Nabucco in 1842, Verdi had seen his operas staged with questionable productions, makeshift sets and casts that were not exactly up to scratch. Merelli squeezed every last penny out of everyone and tried to save money on everything. But he did not stop there. The critic Franco Abbiati recounted that Merelli tried to resell "Giovanna d’Arco" without the composer’s knowledge, as if it were his own property. The story is also recounted by Giuseppe Barigazzi in his highly entertaining "La Scala racconta". Verdi discovered the impresario’s misdeeds; the latter had been trying to strike a deal directly with the publisher Giovanni Ricordi – who, in turn, exposed him – and despite having no fewer than four operas on the bill that season (1845–46), he broke with the theatre and the impresario, swearing never to work with him again, withdrew Macbeth from the programme and had it premiere in Florence instead. This is why many of Verdi’s operas reached La Scala years after their debut at other theatres. This was the case with La Traviata, which did not reach Milan until 1859, even though it had been written with a librettist closely associated with the Milanese theatre, namely Francesco Maria Piave, who, together with the composer from Busseto, created seminal operas such as Ernani, Rigoletto, Macbeth itself, and subsequently La forza del destino. As for La Traviata, Violetta’s story has since been staged in numerous productions: in 1861, in ’77 and ’78 with Patti – who was extremely famous at the time – in ’79 with Marie Heilbronn, in ’86 with Gemma Bellincioni, in 1893 once again with Patti, conducted by Edoardo Mascheroni, in 1906 with Rosina Storchio and conducted by Lepoldo Mugnone, and, after a fairly long hiatus, in 1923 when Toscanini conducted Gilda Della Rizza and Aureliano Pertile (revived subsequently in 1925 and 1928). Subsequently, a series of productions featured other leading ladies who are often unjustly forgotten, such as Gina Cigna, Maria Caniglia and Mafalda Favero.

In the midst of the Second World War, on 11 April 1943, La Traviata was still being staged under the baton of Nino Sanzogno, but a few months later, the theatre was left half-destroyed by the brutal bombing in August and performances were halted. Thus, in 1945, La Scala moved to the nearby Teatro Lirico, and La Traviata returned once more with Mario Terni conducting Onelia Fineschi and Giovanni Malipiero.

The post-war period, however, was above all the era of the great directors: Giorgio Strehler’s 1947 production with Margherita Carosio was legendary, whilst in 1951 the production was directed by Mario Frigerio, with Victor de Sabata conducting and Tebaldi as the soprano, until in 1955 Luchino Visconti brought Callas back to La Scala – where she had made her debut in 1950 in Aida – in the role of Violetta: the orchestra was conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, the choir master was Norberto Mola, and this is where the legend began, for the premiere took place in May of that year, with Giuseppe Di Stefano as Alfredo, followed by a revival in January in which the great tenor was replaced by the highly talented Gianni Raimondi. Visconti’s La Traviata is no longer a single production – a stripped-down, austere Traviata, somewhere between verismo and heightened passions, reminiscent of Ossessione and Senso – but there are now two, and factions begin to form: the Di Stefano supporters and the Raimondi supporters. There are recordings of this second version and its subsequent performances in which, amidst the rustling and bursts of sound, one can hear the thunderous applause greeting Callas’s performance – a gaunt, haunted Violetta, all vibration and substance – which inspired Eugenio Montale to write: “Tall, with a flamboyant ponytail, vocally robust, at times shrill, half witch, half Pre-Raphaelite figure, gifted with high notes not called for in the score, Callas triumphed and made history”. She marked it all too well, for the axe of the Loggione – colloquially known as the ‘pigeon loft’, where uncompromising music lovers and experts throng, though it sometimes also becomes a metaphysical tribunal, a dark den from which, on certain occasions, ghosts emerge – fell upon Violetta. Moreover, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of her death, La Scala has opened a major exhibition entitled “Grazie a Luchino Visconti”, focusing on the director’s relationship with the Milanese theatre: costumes, writings, sketches and behind-the-scenes material, including from his production of La Traviata.

After that production, the ‘Callas Widowers’ decreed that, following hers, no other Violetta would ever be worthy of treading the boards at La Scala. So much so that, when on 17 December 1964 the ill-fated (so to speak) idea arose to entrust La Traviata to the direction of Franco Zeffirelli and the baton of Herbert von Karajan – who cast his protégée Mirella Freni in the role – the theatre was in an uproar. Barigazzi writes: “Betrayed by the tension, she faltered on the two dreaded ‘Gioir!’ at the end of the first act. That minor slip was enough to provoke an exaggerated outcry, to which Mirella, unwisely, responded with a defiant gesture towards the gallery.” The great Modena-born soprano was showered with boos, and she returned to the front of the stage with her hands on her hips and her chin raised toward the dark auditorium, as if to say: ‘Well, what now?’ The result was that there were only two more performances, and not even with her, but with Anna Moffo. The entire company was forced to pack up and leave. It is worth noting that Freni would later become a symbol of La Scala, a darling of the house. Many years later, she would recall that episode: “It was all staged. There were the gangs. But in the meantime, I’m still here.”

So, silence for twenty-six years, until Muti, in 1990, together with Cavani and Fabbricini, brought Violetta back to life, defying the edict, though not without a diplomatic gesture. On the eve of the premiere, Muti and the superintendent Carlo Maria Badini made their position clear via the pages of Il Corriere della Sera: “We have absolutely no intention of confronting a past that has now been consigned to history”. The understated, elegantly traditional production by Cavani, Ferretti and Pescucci rose to the challenge; Fabbricini and Roberto Alagna passed the test. Violetta was rehabilitated. But who is this character?

Well, it’s Violetta Valéry, the woman who lived four times. The first, in the flesh, was registered at birth as Alphonsine Plessis; she arrived in Paris from the provinces, was poor, and carried with her the traumas of the oppressed classes of the economically cruelest century, the nineteenth. But she was, it seems, beautiful – possessing a strange Modiglianian beauty – and intelligent, with a Balzac-like intelligence; she was sixteen years old. She changed her name to Marie Duplessis—which sounded better—to gain entry to the capital’s salons, and succeeded thoroughly. The third time, her name became Marguerite Gautier, born of the imagination and personal memories of the astute Alexandre Dumas the Younger, who had been her lover, knew her well, and reinvented her as the protagonist of La signora delle camelie. The fourth and final version, Violetta herself, sprang from the pen of Francesco Maria Piave, at the urging of Giuseppe Verdi, who had read Dumas’s play and been deeply moved by it. If there is such a thing as an immortal heroine, it is her. According to reliable statistics, La Traviata is the most frequently performed opera in the world. Violetta—the ill-fated, pitiable, theatrical, unsuspected, courageous, sinful and virtuous Violetta—is the most coveted role and also one of the most challenging a soprano can tackle. No soprano becomes a diva without having played Violetta and sung her jubilant ‘Let us enjoy, fleeting and swift, the joy of love’, her carefree and provocative ‘Always free’, and the heart-rending, irresistible ‘Love me, Alfredo’; and need we even mention the finale? When death arrives to the sound of the trombones and is met with an uncanny resignation, almost with joy: ‘How strange, the spasms of pain have ceased/An unusual vigour is reborn within me and stirs me!/Ah, I am coming back to life/Oh joy!’. It is a death on stage worthy of Dido, Juliet and Mimi.

Violetta is a character born to cause a scandal. The vivacious young lady of the Parisian demimonde who abandons her carefree life to believe in Alfredo’s love – who is, in reality, a fool who squanders his money in defiance of what was said about her – so much so that his father, Giorgio Germont—a conformist—forces her to back down, to pretend to betray him, so as not to disrupt the quiet bourgeois family life (a sister is due to get married, imagine that!), and yet the true noble nature of the girl—very young and of sound character—comes to the fore, but it is too late; she dies of consumption.

Giuseppe Verdi was forced to set the story in an earlier era when he first staged it, in order to get past the Austrian censors, and choosing the leading lady proved a struggle; she was a complex character, with subtle nuances and intricate psychological layers. On Wednesday evening, for the 300th performance, the American soprano Nadine Sierra – stunning and statuesque in Pescucci’s dazzling costumes – but the whole of Ferreti’s set is illuminated by these costumes, which are like a basket of juicy fruit or a vase of fresh, fragrant flowers – received numerous spontaneous rounds of applause, even from the gallery, because her vocal talents are truly exceptional. She is perfectly in tune; she never puts a foot wrong. There was also great applause for Germont the elder, played very convincingly by the Russian baritone Boris Pinkhasovich. Not a great deal of applause for the others. The reaction could be described as restrained or, as is customary in business reports, ‘mixed’. As for Violetta’s portrayal, and the emotional intensity – in short, the emotional charge of the opera – the Milanese bourgeoisie, which remains much the same as ever: shrewd, stern-faced, sufficiently well-informed and prudent, just as it was when Field Marshal Radetzky paraded through the city, is very likely to reserve judgement until a later date. In the meantime, the ghosts remain in the shadows, until the next performance.