Camellia (September)

Rows of them along side streets this morning have lost half their flowers. They are washed up against the lengths of cream brick fence. The ghosts of camellias and memories come back of yesterday’s matinee of La Traviata where for the first time I noticed how the main character is Violetta and were they roses, not camellias at all? This, I wondered, is one more Verdi aside, one more turn-up for the books. Those in the know overlooked the tenor’s debut nerves and no one else noticed anyway. We all had our own reasons for being at the opera. If the Baron made a gesture with his cigar was this Italian for high spirits or something more explicit? We’ll never know and it may never matter. The laughter of the chorus was staged but we believed every pretence as chords changed for the next mood. No wonder Italians adore Verdi, as he lines up a series of impeccable art songs into an emotional roller-coaster. There is barely a story to speak of. The story is how one emotion leads to another through song, not by plotline. Only Verdi could take hold of a narrative and make it almost invisible behind a foreground of music and words, like the ghost of a camellia. Did we notice how only once does someone say directly to Violetta that she has “a past”, as though nothing more need be said. Do we ever believe the characters feel these emotions? They feel them when they sing them, even if the action causes belief to fall apart within moments of the news. For that one sweet sorrowful moment there is nothing more to be said. Verdi gives his cast their moments of choice and let’s the music lead us into consequences. Drinking songs and intervals are realistic time-out from this sort of intensity. Did the curtain catch halfway at the ovation? It didn’t matter, after Violetta’s death song, which does the surge through my senses next morning down in the street where no one is waiting nervously for the Director’s notes.