La traviata Felice Varesi and the tenor Lodovico Graziani. The next day, Verdi wrote to his friend Emanuele Muzio in what has now become perhaps his most famous letter: ""La traviata" last night a failure. Was the fault mine or the singers'? Time will tell." Coincidentally, as Philips-Matz points out, an Italian translation of the play "La Dame aux camélias" was being presented just a short distance from La Fenice. While there were demands for productions from impresarios in various Italian cities, Verdi was loath to allow them unless he could be sure of the strength of the singers, and in spite
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas his use of the name "Alexandre Dumas" is his entry in the registry book of the Queen's Dragoons, which he joined on June 2, 1786. (It was known in his platoon that this was "not his real name.") He used the simple form "Alex Dumas" starting in 1794. General Dumas used the full name "Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie" on his son's birth certificate. The enlistment roll-book for the 6th Regiment of the Queen's Dragoons, which Dumas joined in 1786, described him as "6 feet tall, with frizzy black hair and eyebrows... oval face, and brown skinned, small mouth, thick