La Traviata [recording]

This story of true love and family conflict is set to magnificent melodies and waltzes by Verdi. The story is an attack on conventional bourgeois morality, arguing that a good heart is more important than propriety, that the social distinctions which split high society from the world of illicit sex are cruel and hypocritical, and that true love must triumph over all. La Traviata's intent scrutiny of a woman whose sexual employment and cultural identity have been conflated, focuses on the prostitute as a means to interrogate contemporary society's fraught treatment of the commercial. It is also a story of parental control and possessiveness that results in tragedy for the younger generation, a portrait of family enmeshment, and it’s final resolution, through disaster, in some understanding , reconciliation, and repentance.