Behind the scenes of La traviata
This autumn the Glyndebourne Tour 2014 takes Verdi's La traviata, a new production from the 2014 Festival, to venues around the country including, Woking, Canterbury, Norwich, Milton Keynes, Plymouth, Dublin and Stoke-on-Trent.
Tickets and information: http://glyndebourne.com/production/la...
La traviata, the fallen woman. Does that phrase still have relevance today?
For Verdi it was a subject of intense personal significance. He and the singer Giuseppina Strepponi lived together for ten years before they married, enduring the objections of those who viewed her as a woman of no worth or moral standing.
Violetta, the fallen woman of the title, is a vividly real, flesh-and-blood creation. She suffers from the consumption which will inevitably kill her but which, in the view of the time, brought with it a feverish intensity and heightened erotic impulse. Life, for her, is to be grasped with both hands and lived to the full.
The character is based on Marie Duplessis, mistress of Alexandre Dumas fils, who fictionalised her in his novel La Dame aux camélias. When another writer, Marcel Proust, saw La traviata, he wrote: ‘It’s a work which goes straight to my heart. Verdi has given it the style it lacked … for a dramatic work to touch popular sentiment the addition of music is essential.’
That music was written by Verdi at the peak of his powers. It is lyrical, heartbreaking and unforgettable, appealing directly to the emotions and resulting in an opera that invents itself anew for every generation.