La traviata

Violetta Valéry is a noble courtesan in Paris who has "strayed from the path of virtue" and leads a life that oscillates between splendour and misery. For her everything is a game – even love – until Alfredo Germont awakens true feelings in her. But this rare happiness only lasts fleetingly for Violetta, who suffers from tuberculosis, and who is first publicly humiliated before passing away. Only once did Giuseppe Verdi turn his attention to a contemporary subject, Alexandre Dumas the Younger’s La dame aux camélias. As a novel and a play, Dumas based his story on true events. Verdi composed a score of great intensity that conveys a wide range of emotions: joy and exuberance, sorrow and despair. The audience is pulled into the plot and feels directly affected by Violetta’s fate. As the last work of the "trilogia populare", La Traviata, which premiered in 1853 and was first shown at Unter den Linden in 1860, quickly quashed initial scepticism and became a successful opera on an international scale. Dieter Dorn’s production portrays Violetta as a woman condemned to death from the very beginning, but who rebels against her fate. In the end, she fades away, almost ethereally.