If one painstakingly analyzes and compares the novel, the theatrical and the libretto versions of Marguerite-Violetta, a several-time reborn character from the novel and drama Camille, one notices striking differences and gleans useful insights as to the peculiarity of the three genres involved (novel, theatre and opera) and as to the reductive work of the libretto writer who, by modifying the roles of the characters and the values they channel, achieves a synthesis that has no match in the works he draws from. / This thesis aimed precisely at highlighting the intervening differences among the three genres, while pointing out the changes which were introduced and the peculiar nature of the final product, the libretto of La Traviata .

Alexandre Dumas fils' La Dame aux Camélias has existed in various media for more than 150 years, originating from life events that were mediated through the novel and remediated via theater, opera, and film. I examine in my thesis how this particular narrative has survived the centuries and how each depiction relates the social expectations, desires, and fears of the time period in which the revised story is generated. The relationship between Dumas and the famous courtesan Marie Duplessis and its fictional recreations in Dumas' novel La Dame aux Camélias, his play Camille, Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata, and Baz Luhrmann's film Moulin Rouge! reflects a human compulsion to create narratives in order to grasp daily events and to potentially escape those events or comment upon those which do not fit concisely into their socially expected codes of understanding.

No description available.