La Traviata

La Traviata — surely is one of the greatest operas ever written, and one of the most important works from the so-called ”middle period“ in the works ofVerdi. For the first time ever the composer based his opera on a modern, popular, book which shocked the society, and not a myth, or, say, a play by Shakespeare. It was a real revolution, a real shock to the public: the opera, which tells about real people, living in the present, with real problems, the opera telling the story about love between an experienced woman and a very young man who, in addition, came from different social strata, about anincurable disease. And, please, note that La Traviata does not belong to those works where love overcomes all obstacles.

Today we no longer think about it. La Traviata is not perceived by us as arevolutionary product, but it seems to me that even now it is still very important to find in the characters that force and ‘intensity’ of emotions that shocked people.

For me and for all the staging team it is a huge honor to work on La Traviata at the Bolshoi Theatre. This opera has not been on a stage for rather a long time. And for us it is a chance to tell a story which seems to be well-known to everybody, but which nobody really knows. In this performance we will atthe story via the perception of Violetta herself — a mysterious and beautiful woman, whom everyone loved and idealized, but — no one knew.