La Traviata - N7 Scena e duetto

Description

La Traviata, Verdi's opera first performed at La Fenice in Venice in 1853, is heard here in a solo piano version; this is its No. 7. In the first scene of Act II, Germont, Alfredo's father, visits Violetta at the house outside Paris where she lives with his son, and presses her to give him up. The scene decides the course of the story, and this long duet is often called the heart of the opera.

The music alternates between recitative-like exchanges and passages where the melody gathers into song. Germont's “Pura siccome un angelo”, about his daughter's marriage, and Violetta's “Dite alla giovine”, in which she agrees to step aside, are handed back and forth as the scene unfolds. In this file it runs about nineteen minutes with more than 6,000 notes, and the range from B-flat 1 to B-flat 6 does not fit a 61-key keyboard.

It is a large piece for advanced players, and the challenges are stamina and changing tone colour from one stage of the scene to the next. Rather than playing straight through, it is more practical to split it with the A-B loop at each section of the dialogue. The hand colours show which hand carries the melody at any point, and fast passages can be learned at a reduced playback speed before returning to tempo.

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