by Rene Weis

The Real Traviata is the rags-to-riches story of a tragic young woman whose life inspired one of the most famous operas of all time, Verdi's masterpiece La traviata, as well as one of the most scandalous and successful French novels of the nineteenth century, La Dame aux Camelias, by Alexandre Dumas fils.

The woman at the centre of the story, Marie Duplessis, escaped from her life as an abused teenage girl in provincial Normandy, rising in an amazingly short space of time to the apex of fashionable life in nineteenth century Paris, where she was considered the queen of the Parisian courtesans. Her life was painfully short, but by sheer willpower, intelligence, talent, and stunning looks she attained such prominence in the French capital that ministers of the government and even members of the French royal family fell under her spell.

In the 1840s, she commanded the kind of 'paparazzi' attention that today we associate only with major royalty or the biggest Hollywood stars. Aside from the younger Dumas, her conquests included a host of writers and artists, including the greatest pianist of the century, Franz Liszt, with whom she once hoped to elope. When she died Theophile Gautier, one of the most important Parisian writers of the day, penned an obituary fit for a princess. Indeed, he boldly claimed that she had been a princess, notwithstanding her peasant origin and her distinctly demi-monde existence.

And although now largely forgotten, in the years immediately after her death, Marie's legend if anything grew in stature, with her immortalization in Verdi's La traviata, an opera in which the great Romantic composer tried to capture her essence in some of the most heart-wrenching and lyrical music ever composed.

Table of Contents:

1. Prologue: A weekend in the country
2. A mother and daughter: 1824-1837
3. L'affaire Plantier: Exmes 1837
4. Working girls in Paris: 1839-1841
5. A fair lady meets Pygmalion: 1840-1841
6. The baby of a traviata: Versailles, May 1841
7. Stallions and flaneurs on the Boulevard des Italiens: 1841-1842
8. An old count in Baden-Baden: July 1842
9. Partying in Paris and London with Antinous: 1842-1843
10. A summer idyll on a bend in the river: 1843
11. Sin and luxury at 11 Boulevard de la Madeleine: 1844-1847
12. Alexandre Dumas fils, Lola Montez, and Olympe Aguado: 1844-45
13. The pianist, the baroness, and the actress: October 1845-February 1846
14. A registry wedding in London: 21 February 1846
15. A summer sunset in the spas of Europe: 1846
16. Agony and death of a maiden: October 1846-3 February 1847
17. Two winter funerals in Montmartre: February 1847
18. Auction at 11 Boulevard de la Madeleine: February 1847
19. La Dame aux Camelias, by Alexandre Dumas fils: 1848
20. La Dame aux Camelias at the Vaudeville: February 1852
21. Verdi and teh Barezzis--The genius of La traviata: 1823-1852
22. La traviata 1853-1854: The apotheosis of Marie Duplessis
23. Epilogue: Memory and myth
Notes
Index