It is commonly held...
that Giuseppe Verdi was not particularly religious...
and that if anything, he was something of an anti-clerical, like so many Italian nationalists of his time. Certainly Aida – the story of two innocent lovers crushed, indeed quite literally buried alive, by an overweening theocracy – might lend itself to this interpretation. But I, for one, do not subscribe to this reductive theory. Verdi may not have been much of a Catholic outwardly, but he hád a Catholic soul.
La Traviata is an opera – his only one conceived as a contemporary story – about the redemption of a fallen woman: one who forsakes fleshly love, making the supreme sacrifice, that of love itself, so her lover can be happy without her. Violetta proves her great love of Alfred through renunciation: a very Victorian theme – something that one might expect from George Eliot – but a very Catholic theme as well.
The great love in the opera is in fact that of father for daughter, brother for sister; Germont père asks Violetta to forgo Alfredo for the sake of his daughter, and she does so, asking him to embrace her as a daughter. Love of family is the higher form of love. Traviata is a love opera, and an opera about love – different types of love. It has theological profundity.
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