Poetry of the brothel or poetry with big, big, big balls?

La Traviata correspondent, July 2015

Opera is no stranger to controversy. Whether it’s confronting its audiences with the barbarous violations that invariably take place against women during war or the hypocrisy that runs rife in all societies that attempt to quash the free expression of taboo areas of human experience; the medium of opera ploughs the audience face first through the wild grasslands of reality unearthing uncomfortable truths as it does so. If you’re worried you may come out of the field with a mouth full of mud and worms then perhaps it is better to stay at home and watch a re-run of Murder She Wrote. However for those of you who don’t mind leaving the opera a little ruffled and unsettled then you stand a chance of coming closer to truth, if you have the courage to bear it. 

It is the double standards that apply to gender that was the chief concern of Verdi when he conceived La Traviata. Verdi was no doubt inspired by his own predicament of falling in love with soprano singer and mother of four Giuseppina  Strepponi, no doubt knowing full well that this would court social condemnation for flyng in the face of the mores of the time. Indeed Verdi was eventually shunned by the inhabitants of his home town for ‘living in sin’ with Strepponi. But it was a visit to Paris where he saw Alexandre Dumas, fils’ play La Dame aux Camelias with his new lover Strepponi that La Traviata was truly born.  Verdi chose to base the libretto on Dumas’ dramatization of the short adult life of courtesan Marie Duplessis.

Duplessis’ childhood was a brutal one and when she escaped from it she lived fast and hard in a world of pleasure before dying of tuberculosis at age 23. Whereas Duplessis could not afford the luxury of love as the life of a courtesan seldom would, Verdi’s character Violetta who is based on Duplessis finds love as a means of salvation. But in the end, Violletta would be denied real happiness when the father of her lover requests she give up his son because of her reputation and the shame this was bringing to his family. So though the men are free to ‘sow their wild oats’ they are welcomed back to society with open arms. all is forgiven so long as you marry a ‘reputable’ woman. If you still can’t give up your ‘staggish’ ways then fine but try to be inconspicuous about it. However, for the woman it’s ‘once a whore always a whore’. There is no hope for redemption. This hypocrisy continues to this day in various guises in all echelons of society. It’s the grim reality of gender inequality.

So, is it as the critics put it, ‘poetry of the brothel ‘when La Traviata premiered in London in 1856? Or, is closer to Verdi’s rallying cry for, ‘poetry with big, big, big balls’? I would argue they are one and the same. The poetry of the brothel is the poetry of the cruel unforgiving reality of life when in order to survive a woman is forced into a way of life where she is ultimately doomed. But as Verdi shows us, the prostitute retains her humanity and in our hypocrisy, maybe it’s us who have lost ours. Now if that isn’t poetry with big balls then I don’t know what is.