La Traviata

La Traviata/The Fallen Woman/The Woman Who Goes Astray

I don’t like it. I don’t mean that I don’t like Verdi’s opera. I just don’t like its naming, La Traviata. I don’t like the categorisation which drops Violetta (Marguerite Gautier in the novel) into one of fallen women. I’ve liked and pitied Marguerite since I first met her from Dumas’s novel in my teens. I think, however, she is absolutely different from me in every aspect. The only thing I share with Marguerite Gautier is too slim waist. Now mine is 21 inches though I’m an elder woman who has born two [grown up] children many years ago. If I tighten my waist with ‘corset or whatever’ as Scarlet O’Hara did, it would be much slimmer. I’ve never done that, though. I don’t like corsets.

The opera/novel was translated “춘희(椿姬)” in East Asia, which definitely Japanese did. The name “춘희(椿姬)” means ‘the girl of camellia’ which might’ve been brought from the title of its original story of Alexandre Dumas (fis), “The Lady of the Camellias” (French: La Dame aux camélias). I think it was childish/crude translation and I don’t like it, either.

My Korean name is 춘희(春熙), which has the same Korean letters with the opera’s translated title, even though the Chinese letters (春熙, mine) are different from the name’s (椿姬, the girl of camellia). The meaning of my name (春熙) is “spring brightens” or “bright spring”. Nevertheless, my nick name in younger years used to be “LaTraviata” or “Violetta”(the heroine) due to its same Korean letters with the work’s title.

Today I recall “Violetta and Alfredo” (or, “Marguerite Gautier and Armand Duval”), especially their desperate love which led to the end of the heroine’s tragic death. The young man’s pure love didn’t embrace (more properly, maybe, protect) the woman’s true love. He couldn’t remove her stigma of the fallen woman. It reminded me of several tragic loves such as Anna Karenina’s. In fact, Anna is more like me than Marguerite Gautier/Violetta.

My most favourite aria of Violetta’s is "E Strano!...Ah, fors'è lui"...Sempre libera" (Strangely…Ah, perhaps he’s the one…Always free), which requires high technique of coloratura. Now I’m listening to it through June Anderson’s voice, yet June is not my favourite Violetta.

Brit…