La Traviata
Opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi
Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave
German text version by Walter Felsenstein
2 hours 30 minutes
Introduction ... 30 minutes before the beginning of the performance, Foyer
Debut performance 1853 - Premiere on 23 November 2008
Violetta wants to enjoy life for her time is scarce. She savours the ecstasy of the moment in the noble Paris demimonde, trying to forget her deadly disease. Although adored and being in the centre of attention, Violetta cannot believe in true feelings anymore. However, when the young nobleman Alfred ardently confesses his love, Violetta is touched by the utopia of a universal love and breaks radically with her past: She escapes, together with Alfred, into a seemingly perfect idyll of togetherness far away from the city. But Alfred's father Germont urges Violetta to break up this misalliance, so that she finally returns to her former life. After a public éclat the incurably ill Violetta is left alone in desperate conditions.
Contrary to the literary source - the dramatisation of the successful novel »La dame aux camélias« by Alexandre Dumas, fils - Verdi's opera is told from Violetta's perspective: So the partly sarcastic portrait of morals in Dumas' »La Traviata« turns into a spiritual musical portrait. The composer elevates a societal outsider, a »real prostitute«, as Verdi himself underlined, to a tragic figure on the opera stage.
The consistently structured intimate play was first released in 1853 with a music, which even in the worst moments of agony never loses its vibrant beauty, its Belcanto and those transcendental power, focusing hopefully on a better and humane life.