An Exciting Performance Verdi's 'La Traviata' - enjoyed by ROBERT ANDERSON '... result of admirable cooperation between the Zürich stage and pit.'

Some censors are more senseless than others. The Venetian officials who insisted Verdi's 1853 opera on a strictly contemporary subject should be staged in the Paris of 1700 must have been historical ignoramuses. The 'Fallen Women' of that era were in positions of mastery, and the most prostrate of them all, such as Mme De Montespan or Mme De Maintenon, were the virtual rulers of France. The idea of passing out from consumption at the age of 23 was inconceivable. In the end Verdi protested only there must be no wigs.

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