La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi

Isn’t it amazing how music so often matches our emotional experiences? For example, many of us grew up thinking that love would be just like we heard it on the radio -- the way singers from Nat King Cole to the Beatles described it in “Unforgettable,” or “Here, There, and Everywhere.” Then, we were shocked and dismayed to discover that real life isn’t anything like those songs. Of course, we’ve always had poets and songsmiths trying to sell us idyllic fantasies about life and love, and most of those notions wither when exposed to the harsh light of day. But, once in a while, the impossible happens, and those fantasies turn out to be real! It’s, “the stuff that dreams are made of” -- dreams, and even an opera or two.

The idealism of contemporary love songs is nothing new; it would also have been familiar to folks living in the middle ages, back when knights rode white horses and chivalry was the thing. From Catullis to Sammy Cahn and from the noble knight setting forth on an impossible quest, in Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” to a teen-aged Ronnie Spector pleading “Oh, won’t you say you love me, I’ll make you so proud of me,” in “Be My Baby,” there’s never been much difference between the poets of the round-table and the songsmiths of tin-pan alley. Both of them depict painful yearning as the by-product of love.

The problem is that some people immediately drift off into never-never land when confronted with the high-quality fantasizing we find in the best love songs. These are the sort of folks who never were much good at dealing with reality, and when they’re inevitably confronted by the pain real love often causes, their love turns to hate -- the bloody kind of hate we wind up reading about in the paper, or watching on Court TV, or hearing in operas like I Pagliacci, Il Tabarro, and the ironically named Cavalleria Rustiana (“Rustic Chivalry”).

But it doesn’t ALWAYS end like that. Sometimes the dream becomes real. Sometimes the love you give away comes back a hundredfold, perfect and complete, just like all those poets and songwriters promised it would. And sometimes, that love comes from someplace completely suspected. Imagine that you found true love in the arms of a courtesan - that’s French for “hooker” -- and not just any courtesan. This woman truly was the stuff dreams are made of; she sacrificed everything for the object of her affection, even after he coldly rejected her. And it seems there really was such a person. Her name was Marie DuPlessis. Alexander Dumas told her story in a famous play, “The Lady of the Camelias.” Then, Giuseppe Verdi re-named her, as Violetta Valery, and made her the central character in “La Traviata,” the drama we’ll be hearing this weekend, from HOUSTON GRAND OPERA.

But don’t wait for the opening curtain. Before the show, tune in NPR’s At the Opera, for more insight into this classic story of tortured romance. Regular commentator Will Berger tells us all about the legendary, real-life courtesan who inspired the story; we’ll talk about her cinematic descendant, the notorious, Hollywood “femme fatale,” with film scholar Eric Swooden; and we’ll see how Verdi’s music brings Dumas’ storied “Lady of the Camelias” back to life, with our musical guide, Thomson Smillie.

That’s all on At the Opera with Lou Santacroce. Then, stay tuned for the opera itself, on NPR World of Opera with Steve Curwood, in a production from HOUSTON GRAND OPERA.

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