LA TRAVIATA -Bühnen Bern

Description

La traviata Melodrama in three acts by Giuseppe VerdiLibretto by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas the Younger When the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi decided in 1853 to make a courtesan the heroine of an opera, it was more than extraordinary, indeed a scandal. Verdi was inspired to his opera La ­traviata by the true life story of Marie Duplessis, who had died just a few years earlier, as recorded by Alexandre Dumas the Younger in his La Dame aux camélias. As with Dumas, Verdi's focus is not on depicting reality but on storytelling, on the delicate balance between fate and self-determination. This contrast also characterizes Violetta, already heavily marked by illness, who cannot part with the vibrant Parisian nightlife. An escape seems to be emerging in Alfredo and his deep love – but societal morals become her downfall. While the characters dance through Parisian society in waltz rhythm, Violetta's fate shows how difficult it is to escape one's origins. After his successful works Tosca and Hänsel und Gretel, director and set designer Raimund Orfeo Voigt dedicates himself with Verdi's masterpiece to another great classic of opera literature, creating a kaleidoscope of memories in his engagement with the material. Once again at his side: opera chief conductor Alevtina Ioffe. A production of the Opera Bern.