Verdi’s La Traviata (‘The Fallen Woman’) is a three-act opera by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). Composed in 1853, it is based on the story of The Lady of the Camellias, a play by Alexandre Dumas fils. Both the composer and Francesco Maria Piave, the librettist, intended the opera to be staged with the singers in contemporary dress. However, as Violetta, the heroine, is a courtesan, the censors in Venice (where the work was to receive its first performance) insisted that it should be performed in 17th-century costume. Indeed, La Traviata occasioned in some people a strong sense of moral outrage: Queen Victoria refrained from attending the opera when it was staged at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London in 1856, and the heads of the Church did their best to have it banned. Later that year, it was performed at the Academy of Music in New York, where criticism of the work’s moral stance was less severe: the critic of the Evening Post wrote that ‘Those who have quietly sat through the glaring improprieties of Don Giovanni will hardly blush or frown at anything in La Traviata.’ Subsequently, the work proved extremely popular, and it remains one of the most frequently-performed operas of all time.
The Istanbul State Opera and Ballet Company is to conducted for one of the performances (which are to be sung in Italian) by Alessandro de Marchi, and for the other by Zdravko Lazarov, the chorus having been trained by Paolo Villa.
