A world-wide success – Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece from 1853 asks the big questions of modern life concerning freedom and love in the face of hypocritical morality and the brevity of human existence. His triumphal march across the stages of the world continues to this day, making La traviatta a true classic. Under Ainārs Rubiķis‘ musical direction, Komische Oper ensemble member Nadja Mchantaf reels as Violetta Valéry through heart rending states that swing between scandalousness and the joys of love.

She’s worshipped and hotly desired – just don’t get too close! Violetta Valéry, high society courtesan, stands at the center of Parisian nightlife, but is herself a complete outsider. At a party in her salon, Alfredo falls in love with this woman who proclaims she’ll never love. Her father forbids the relationship. Out of longing, jealousy and rage Violetta and Alfredo battle with love … and death.
Based on Alexandre Dumas’ novel Camille the librettist Francesco Maria Piave and Giuseppe Verdi created a masterpiece for the stage. With this production, director Nicola Raab will be making her debut at the Komische Oper. She is particularly interested in the present relevance of this story concerning the will to freedom and self-determination. To what lengths will an independent woman go who is determined to retain control over her life until the end?

La Dame aux Camélias (literally The Lady with the Camellias, commonly known in English as Camille) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, first published in 1848 and subsequently adapted by Dumas for the stage. La Dame aux Camélias premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, France on February 2, 1852. The play was an instant success, and Giuseppe Verdi immediately set about putting the story to music. His work became the 1853 opera La traviata, with the female protagonist, Marguerite Gautier, renamed Violetta Valéry.

In the English-speaking world, La Dame aux Camélias became known as Camille and 16 versions have been performed at Broadway theatres alone. The title character is Marguerite Gautier, who is based on Marie Duplessis, the real-life lover of author Dumas, fils.

Written by Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–1895) when he was 23 years old, and first published in 1848, La Dame aux Camélias is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author's brief love affair with a courtesan, Marie Duplessis. Set in mid-19th-century France, the novel tells the tragic love story between fictional characters Marguerite Gautier, a demimondaine or courtesan suffering from consumption, and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois. Marguerite is nicknamed la dame aux camélias (French for 'the lady of the camellias') because she wears a red camellia when she is menstruating and unavailable for making love and a white camelia when she is available to her lovers.

Armand falls in love with Marguerite and ultimately becomes her lover. He convinces her to leave her life as a courtesan and to live with him in the countryside. This idyllic existence is interrupted by Armand's father, who, concerned with the scandal created by the illicit relationship, and fearful that it will destroy Armand's sister's chances of marriage, convinces Marguerite to leave. Up until Marguerite's death, Armand believes that she left him for another man. Marguerite's death is described as an unending agony, during which Marguerite, abandoned by everyone, regrets what might have been.

The story is narrated after Marguerite's death by two male narrators, Armand and an unnamed frame narrator. Some scholars believe that Marguerite's illness and Duplessis's publicized cause of death, "consumption", was a 19th-century euphemism for syphilis (as opposed to the more common meaning of tuberculosis). Dumas, fils, is careful to paint a favourable portrait of Marguerite, who despite her past is rendered virtuous by her love for Armand, and the suffering of the two lovers, whose love is shattered by the need to conform to the morals of the times, is rendered touchingly. In contrast the Chevalier des Grieux's love for Manon in Manon Lescaut (1731), a French novel by Abbé Prévost referenced at the beginning of La Dame aux Camélias, Armand's love is for a woman who is ready to sacrifice her riches and her lifestyle for him, but who is thwarted by the arrival of Armand's father. The novel is also marked by the description of Parisian life during the 19th century and the fragile world of the courtesan.