La traviata by Verdi, Di. 02 Mai 2023, Ab (2022/2023), Unter der Regie von Alexei Stepanuyk,, Dirigat Pavel Klinichev, Konstantin Chudovsky, Alexey Bogorad, Artem Abashev, Maxim Kozlov, Ekaterinburg Opera, Ekaterinburg, Russland

The premiere of La Traviata in 1853 was marked by a scandal: the heroine is a lady of the half world, the place and time of action is not a distant country in a legendary era, but contemporary Paris to the composer. This could not be the case in 19th-century opera. The public perceived the opera as a slap in the face of society; for the second production, Verdi was forced to change the coordinates of the action and dress the characters in historical dresses. A century and a half later, the opera house can hardly be imagined without La Traviata. The plot of the opera is borrowed from the novel and play by Alexandre Dumas son. The prototype of the heroine was Marie Duplessis, the famous Parisian courtesan: for a short time she was the writer's mistress and died of tuberculosis at the age of 23. In Paris, impressed by the play he saw, Verdi conceived La Traviata, which at first he wanted to call Love and Death. In the Yekaterinburg performance, director Alexei Stepanyuk unfolded the action in conditional ballrooms and living rooms, not abusing the passion for everyday details, but emphasizing the timeless emotional nature of the music - in the expectation that what is happening will not look like just a private incident of the past, but will humanly offend those in the room.