LA TRAVIATA

Description

STAFF OPERA CLUB presents its second season of opera and zarzuela in a small, private setting.

Staff Opera Club is a company whose aim is to bring opera to a wider audience.
Many people cannot afford an opera ticket, and they offer opera for all budgets. Their first production was Verdi's Destino. Following the success of Destino Verdi at the Teatro Villamarta (Jerez), Staff Opera Club launched its second major production, Madama Butterfly (Puccini), which recently toured various theaters in the province of Cádiz, culminating last season at the Teatro Távora where it was a great success with audiences unfamiliar with opera.

Their third major production, the opera of operas, La Traviata (Verdi), recently premiered at the Plaza de Toros in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Other works such as Carmen, en esencia (Bizet), La voix humaine (Poulenc), and La Tabernera del Puerto (Sorozábal) complete Staff Opera Club's operatic offerings. This year's program at the Salvador Távora Theatre in Seville is: LA TRAVIATA, MARÍA PADILLA, and TOSCA

JANUARY 10TH AT 8:30 PM

"LA TRAVIATA"

La Traviata (the wayward one, the stray one) is an opera in three acts with music by Giuseppe Verdi and an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas (fils), The Lady of the Camellias.

La Traviata tells the story of a young man from a good family who lives happily in concubinage with a courtesan until tuberculosis, a disease closely linked to a dissolute life, puts an end to their relationship.

Verdi intended to create an opera with a contemporary setting; he wanted his cast to wear the same clothes as the audience and to hold up a mirror reflecting the spectators. The objective was simple but revolutionary for its time: to break with the historicist tradition of opera and make it a reflection of society, as well as to expose the prevailing sexism and hypocrisy. But the authorities at La Fenice insisted on setting the action in 1700s Paris, and it wasn't until the 1880s that the composer's original wishes were respected and "realistic" productions were staged.