La traviata, one of Verdi's best-known works, takes to the stage at the Teatro Real in Willy Decker's iconic production. 

A passionate love story between Violetta, a courtesan, and Alfredo, set in Paris. Their happiness is threatened by society and Violetta's tuberculosis, which ultimately kills her. The death of the prima donna in the final act of an Italian romantic melodrama would normally require a magnificent scene with choruses, a lyrical cantabile, and a vibrant cabaletta. Verdi had already rejected this old formula in his Nabucco, but in La traviata he took a bolder step by giving his leading lady some simple French-style couplets: the heartbreaking aria “Addio del passato” could be explained by the Parisian setting of this work, but Verdi's dramatic instinct would also be emphasizing the class differences between the “queens” of romantic melodrama and this flesh-and-blood woman, whose stigma condemns her to a lonely and anonymous death, in an exercise of theatrical realism unparalleled even in the decades to come.