La Traviata

The critical edition emends the errors and inconsistencies in the sources and restores the musical text to the state testified to in the autograph score. It discusses in the critical commentary and provides solutions in the score to recurrent problems in the interpretation of the autograph and the performance material of the time that have generated different and at times erroneous readings in the existing versions.

In particular, in respect of the autograph the introduction to the score takes into consideration three broad categories of interpretative problems deriving from corrections of errors and revisions, incomplete and abbreviated notation and inconsistencies.

The critical edition proposes as the principal text the second version of the opera which went on stage on 6 May 1854 at the Teatro di San Benedetto in Venice. The premiere of the opera had taken place at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 6 March 1853, but Verdi, unhappy with the outcome of the first performances, decided to withdraw it from the stage so as to represent it – revised and adapted to a new cast – a year later at the Teatro di San Benedetto.

Since there is no doubt that the composer considered this second version as the definitive one and since this is testified to in the autograph score, the edition adopts it as the principal text.