The Influence of Auber's Le Domino noir on La traviata

As we all know, Verdi's La traviata broke new ground in the operatic canon, not least because, in the words of Julian Budden, it was "bold and contemporary; and combine[d] unorthodoxy with a strong vein of morality, being essentially [a] product . . . of the new age of humanism with its growing sympathy for the individual in whatever walk of life."¹ We also know from Lasina's memorandum apropos of its premiere that Verdi wanted to stress its contemporaneity: "The Signor Maestro Verdi desires, demands and begs that the costumes of this opera La Traviata should remain those of the present day"² —and not the costumes only, but also the musical idiom. Interpreting some muddled directives in the same memorandum, Budden gathers "that Verdi was referring to the party music which he intended to sound contemporary. Strange that he should have imagined the first scene of Rigoletto to be an example of sixteenth-century period style."³

While it is true that Rigoletto lacked the scholarly pastiche Delibes served up for Le roi s'amuse three decades later, Verdi did make two token stabs at antiquarianism—the périgourdine (which, even so, comes up sounding like a saltarello) and the anachronistic minuet. To that extent (small though it might be) there is qualitative difference between the party idiom in Rigoletto and La traviata. And there is another difference as well. Adapting La dame aux camélias (1847) to the musical stage, and bent on retaining its contemporary flavor, Verdi made additional adjustments to his festive idiom. The roystering, brash style that had served the ricevimenti in Ernani and Rigoletto was modified—even transfigured—by the intercalation of more delicate material. In Rigoletto, the party music rings changes on the polka, that robust and countrified dance. There is even a suggestion that Verdi wrote it in the style of Pugni, for in 1846, the year before he crossed the channel for I masnadieri, the ballet Catarina, ou La fille du brigand had been staged in London. (Clearly this must have been the decade of the outlaw!) The ballet's most celebrated moment was a polka militaire, one of whose episodes anticipated a figure in the Rigoletto dance music.

Nothing so joyously blatant in the ricevimenti of La traviata, however, and the source for this new refinement is not hard to find. Wanting to get the musical feel of Paris in the 1840s, Verdi would almost certainly have consulted the operas of Auber and Adam, for, according to La dame aux camélias, the Opéra-Comique was one of Marguerite Gautier's favorite haunts. Verdi must have visited that house when he came to Paris in 1846, and echoes of its style would have lodged in his mind (refreshed by the perusal of scores) when he had to evoke the banquets of the démi-monde. One opera in particular would have suggested the world of Marguerite Gautier, namely, Le Domino noir. Its libretto, a tissue of "dubious" situations, would have thrilled the courtesan who talked "like a porter" and laughed "the more loudly the more scandalous was the joke."⁴ Scribe leaves no doubt, for example, about the fate in store for a country maid at an all-male party ("Ah, je frémis de leur audace"). And it is worth remarking in this regard that in an early draft for La traviata Violetta was to sing her brindisi with an all-male chorus, echoing the situation and replicating the vocal forces of the ronde aragonaise in Le Domino noir. As Budden notes: "The bass clef suggests that Verdi would have had in mind a male rather than a mixed chorus, with Margherita more 'hetaira' than Parisian hostess."⁵

With that parallel to hand, one becomes aware of a feature in the brindisi that seems to have escaped commentators hitherto, namely, that the piece, like the ronde aragonaise, is...