La traviata

Falling in love with a courtesan is doomed from the very start!
Ranking among Verdi’s best-known, most romantic and most tragic operas, La traviata has held the mirror up to society and its hypocritical morals for some 170 years. The terminally ill courtesan Violetta Valéry realises that she must forgo her love for Alfredo Germont, a young man from a respectable family. After abandoning him, she dies in poverty, yet has kept dreaming of the happiness of true love.

Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata, to the libretto based on Alexandre Dumas’s novel La Dame aux camélias, about Marie Duplessis, the famous courtesan and idol of Parisian society in the 1840s, is actually the very first major opera treating a contemporary social theme. The work’s premiere in 1863 in Venice was a flop: the audience was appalled that the lead role had been assigned to a courtesan who, what’s more, was portrayed in a positive light. Yet Verdi’s opera soon started garnering plaudits and is now one of the most popular repertoire titles the world over.

Author: Giuseppe Verdi

Approximate running time: 2 hours 45 minutes, 2 intermission (20 minutes) minutes

Language: In Italian, surtitles in Czech, English

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