It Is Too Late And She Finally Dies

I cried my way through the 1983 Italian La Traviata film

by Franco Zeffirelli with the music of Giuseppe Verdi &

Soprano Teresa Stratas, tenor Plácido Domingo and

baritone Cornell MacNeil starring & singing their roles

 

The film opens in the Paris home of Violetta Valéry,

courtesan, sheets covering furniture in dimly lit rooms

creditors & appraisers removing artwork & furnishings

Violetta pale & bedridden, remembers happier times

 

I cried my eyes out on seeing Teresa Strata’s lovely

face, screen showing flashbacks to her lavish party

where she met Placido Domingo, a nobleman Alfredo

who has long adored Violetta from afar and after three

 

Months they are happy together when Alfredo’s father

Giorgio arrives to request Violetta end her relationship

with his son because of what her unsavoury reputation

is doing to his daughter – if this does not bring you to

 

Tears, nothing will ever do it to you – Violetta returns

to Paris where Alfredo humiliates her and by this time

I’m a nervous wreck – then she lies dying as Alfredo

appears and declares his love, but it is too late and

 

She finally dies after singing many a line – and right

at the end I noticed my mother watching with me has

been crying quietly just as I did, both of us not making

a sound for fear of giving offence – it was a beautiful

 

Film and nearly cost us our lives strangling ourselves

hiding our desperate sobs, weeping uncontrollably