The Royal Opera’s summer season of scintillating Italian works begins spectacularly with Renée Fleming as Violetta and Joseph Calleja as Alfredo in Verdi’s enduring favourite, La Traviata, conducted by Antonio Pappano, Music Director of the Royal Opera.
La Traviata, the operatic version of La Dame Aux Camélias, comes vividly to life in Richard Eyre’s classic production, whose rich stage designs evoke the pleasure-seeking whirl of Parisian society. But beneath the glamour lies the doomed love of Alfredo for Violetta, a courtesan, and the tensions they encounter as they break society’s conventions.
Verdi’s La Traviata score matches soaring melodies to great dramatic moments. Act I celebrates life and pleasure with its great showpiece ‘Ah! fors’è lui’. In Act II Alfredo’s stern father, Germont, sung by Thomas Hampson, discovers in an intense confrontation that Violetta’s love is truly noble. The crowds and dancing girls of the gambling scene that follows throw into relief La Traviata’s final heart-rending reunion of Alfredo with Violetta, now seriously ill, when he discovers too late the truth of her selfless sacrifice for him.
La Traviata is performed in Italian with English surtitles.
Learn more about London operas within the West End.