In startling contrast to the ghostly atmospherics of Lucia di Lammermoor, Verdi’s 1853 portrait of a celebrated courtesan in love with a callow youth from a provincial bourgeois family is as unflinching in its examination of the decadence of the Parisian demimonde as a novel by Zola. As Violetta Valéry navigates the last months of her life, she must choose between hedonism and self-sacrifice, escaping then returning to the city that made her and will eventually destroy her. Sumptuously designed by Cordelia Chisholm, with reference to the scandalous paintings of Gustave Courbet and John Singer Sargent, and described as “world class” in The Stage and “dazzling” in The Guardian, Rodula Gaitanou’s exceptional 2018 production of La traviata returns to Holland Park with an outstanding cast.