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
Giuseppe Verdi and Strepponi left Paris in July 1849, the immediate cause being an outbreak of cholera, and Verdi went directly to Busseto to continue work on completing his latest opera, "Luisa Miller", for a production in Naples later in the year. Verdi was committed to the publisher Giovanni Ricordi for an opera—which became "Stiffelio"—for Trieste in the Spring of 1850; and, subsequently, following negotiations with La Fenice, developed a libretto with Piave and wrote the music for "Rigoletto" (based on Victor Hugo's "Le roi s'amuse") for Venice in March 1851. This was the first of a sequence of three operas (followed