Verdi a Parigi by Paolo Isotta

 Verdi a Parigi

by Paolo Isotta, beloved musicologist disappeared recently and gone too soon is a masterpiece and if you love Verdi, this book is for you. 

I would want to suggest this book also to all that people not too much into melodramma but that want to learn much more, because trust me, with the informations that a beautiful mind like Isotta shares with you, you will appreciate much more lyric.

Why Isotta wrote this book? 

Because there wasn't previously a book in grade to put in evidence something so remarkably interesting: that Verdi made the difference in the Parisien melodramma and that his passage has been one of the most significative ones. Unfortunately italian literature wasn't in grade the capture the exceptionality of Verdi, writes Isotta and anglo-american literature loves to focus mainly in artists like Meyerbeer, Haley and others; italians are not taken in consideration, although they made the difference. and the story of the French Opera has been built by italians like Salieri, Gluck, Cherubini, Spontini Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi. 

Verdi knew the french society very well, exactly as he knew the italian one. The realization of La Traviata, after the reading of Flaubert and Balzac, meant to him the knowledge of what Isotta calls le monde, the demi-monde and what it is in the between.

If compared to the biggest writers and musicians of all the time, the geniality of Verdi is this one: reading the reality as close and distant, in its proximity and in its distancy. 

The various chapters of this book are entirely dedicated to the french operas he treated. I picked up La Traviata. 

In this opera it is treated the thematic of pronstitution; Alphonsine Plessie or later in the demi-monde described as Mary Duplessis was a prostitute largely known in the  pariesien elite. 

This lady was maintained by very rich and wealthy men very proud of being in her orbit.

At the same time, there was a strong male homosexuality in the Paris of that time.

Isotta remarks the importance of reading several books on the topic written by Dumas father: Le Demi-Monde and La question d'Argent.

Linzt was one of the lovers of Mary Duplessis. Born very popor, violented by her father, once the orc died, at 16 age, she started this work in Paris, evidently thinking that no other work could be great for her. 

Being beautiful, she becomes the lover of an aristocrat. The education that the artistocrat imparted her was appreciated; she started to be in grade of reading, she wore beautiful clothes but never too eccentric, she had a child, but she didn't abandon him.

She also had an 80 years old lover: Gustav Ernst von Stackelberg, pretty jealous of the other ones he offered her wagons of money and wonderful houses. Dumas Son becomes another lover of Duplessis; it's a moment in which her illness is in progression. She died in misery and with most of her affectionated lovers, included the oldest one, gone.

Armand Duval e Marguerite are the protagonists of La Signora delle Camiele by Dumas.

A book plenty of pathos, Armand will discover the strong opposition of his father, who wanted to preserve money and things, and who convinced in a way or in another Marguerite at leaving her beloved lover.

Verdi sees in this story the great chance for a masterpiece: what the Traviata is. The story similar: Violetta is a courtesan, Alfredo a boy who will fall in love for her, with the strong opposition of his father. Violetta at the same time understands that she can't experience a normal love because she is a pronstitute...

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio fot rhe physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori