La traviata

Violetta quits the night job and moves in with Alfredo outside Paris in bucolic bliss for a while, and what’s more, paying the bills (without Alfredo’s knowledge). It all goes downhill when Alfredo’s old dad finds out, pays a visit and asks Violetta to vacate the scene before her reputation messes up his daughter’s chances of an advantageous marriage. Violetta helpfully complies, and quickly calls her ex to squire her to a party that evening.

Weeks later, Violetta’s lungs have finally packed up and she is dying. The ex is nowhere to be seen. Alfredo, who has finally got up to speed with things, shows up. Too late! She dies.

La traviata, or ‘the fallen woman’, was Verdi’s only opera on a contemporary subject, and scandalised the authorities before it premiered in 1853. It’s based on the life of Marie Duplessis, the Parisian prostitute with whom the novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas fell in love.