The Real Traviata

The rags-to-riches story of a tragic young woman whose life inspired one of the most famous operas of all time, Verdi's masterpiece La traviata, as well as one of the most scandalous and most successful French novels of the nineteenth century, La Dame aux Camélias, by Alexandre Dumas fils. The woman at the centre of this story, Marie Duplessis, rose in a remarkably short time from an abused teenage girl in Normandy to become the queen ofParisian courtesans, at the apex of fashionable life in nineteenth century Paris. Her life was painfully short, but by sheer willpower, intelligence, talent, and stunning looks she attained such prominence in the French capitalthat ministers of the government and even members of the French royal family fell under her spell. And although now largely forgotten, in the years immediately after her death, Marie's legend if anything grew in stature, with her immortalization in Verdi's La traviata, an opera in which the great Romantic composer tried to capture her essence in some of the most heart-wrenching and lyrical music ever composed.