La Traviata (The Fallen Woman) is based on the famously scandalous novel, La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas.

Clonter’s production of this Verdi masterpiece, directed by Christopher Cowell, aims to reveal the darkness beneath the sparkle of a rich and hedonistic society. Paris in the 1840s is the setting of Dumas the Younger’s seminal work, which recounts a thinly-veiled version of his impetuous affair with Marie Duplessis. She becomes the Violetta Valéry of Verdi’s opera. Her life was brief but incandescent as a courtesan among the lesser Parisian nobility. Tragically, her career was cut short by a fatal consumption and by her immediate abandonment by the circle of whom she was once such a fêted centre point. A father’s affection for his children proves a ruthless opponent to her search for the experience of “real” love before she dies. Moral superiority, hypocrisy and indifference all play their part in her ruin. The production will concentrate on the disintegration of a life that strives for redemption through one act of self-sacrifice, but is nevertheless judged immoral by the society that created her, used her and then destroyed her.

Music Director & Conductor – Clive Timms

Director – Christopher Cowell

Assistant Music Director – Robin Humphreys

Set & Costume Designer – Eleanor Wdowski

Production shots Pauline Neild