An overpowering and paradoxical perfume of dream and reality floats around La Traviata, as if life and death of this so-called « stray » woman seem more real and more elusive than those of other opera heroines. It is with this perfume, composed of rare flower essences, of alcohols, of prescription drugs, of skins caressed, of seemingly odourless money, that Giuseppe Verdi deeply impregnated his musical material, just at the time when the perfume of the story of the courtesan Marie Duplessis, who died in 1847, six years before the opera was created in Venice, was evaporating.
In Traviata – You deserve a better future, the audience is invited into Violetta’s privacy to have a close look at the fire to which she abandons herself among the guests of this musical and phantasmagorical celebration that blends theatre and opera, voices that speak and sing, and where the distinction between the instrumentalists and the singers becomes blurred, where Charles Baudelaire is seated next to Christophe Tarkos, and where the phantoms of this Paris in full industrial boom whose future we are living at present, sing and die.
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Theatre des Bouffes du Nord
As a legendary venue where the walls patina witnesses the memory of exceptional events the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord hosts actors and musicians from all over the world since its early days. Built in 1876, it re-opened in 1974 under the direction of Peter Brook and Micheline Rozan. In 2010, Olivier Mantei and Olivier Poubelle took over the management of the theatre and still carry on a tradition of a place of creation.
Conception: Benjamin Lazar, Florent Hubert and Judith Chemla
Stage direction: Benjamin Lazar
Musical arrangements and direction: Florent Hubert, Paul Escobar