is the voice on which he counts to elucidate
La Traviata was first produced in 1853, supposedly a disaster because of the singers, and is the middle opera of a period of three compositions in three years. Prior to Rigoletto, the first of the three, Verdi's canvas had been epic, but now he changed his focus. The wailing gypsy crying after her hanged son in Trovatore, the hunchback in Rigoletto, and the dying courtesan in Traviata all represented a concern with the psychology of the unheroic individual that was new to Verdi and to Italian opera, and that would culminate in the character of Sir John Falstaff forty years later.
The autobiographical significance of La Traviata is as great as you wish to make it. Verdi was living with Peppina out of wedlock, much as Alfredo and Violetta were in Act II. Verdi's mistress was regarded as a lady of easy virtue because of this, and Verdi was advised by numerous "Germonts," of both sexes, to sever the relationship. Only one man had the impact that the character has in the opera, and that
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