Florentine director Giovanni Ortoleva concludes his trilogy dedicated to the myths of romantic love – which includes the production LAC La dodicesima notte (o quello che volete) by William Shakespeare – with the dramaturgy and direction of La signora delle camelie, a new show loosely based on one of the greatest novels of nineteenth-century literature.

La dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, a text of surprising social violence, gave rise to one of the most intense female “stereotypes” of the 19th century, becoming a model for many highly successful artistic products: ballets, operas, plays and films.
Over the centuries, the impossible love between Marguerite Gautier and Armand Duval has continued to be repeated, becoming, perhaps, the greatest modern romantic myth; but Dumas fils' novel is rather based on a true story and has retained all its brutality, despite the reactionary and moralising intentions of its author.
And so, while the myth, repetition after repetition, becomes more cloying and sentimental, La signora delle camelie in this new production by Ortoleva becomes above all the merciless chronicle of a social murder, in which class violence unmasks the romanticism that covered it.
A show stretched between the 19th century and the ultra-contemporary, which recounts, together with the anguish and nobility of its heroine, the voyeurism and perversion of a society that vents its tensions on the female body. A story that continues to touch us, more than we would like.