Verdi: La traviata

Verdi's La traviata caused a scandal when it was new: the only one of Verdi's operas to be set in the composer's own time, its story of a Parisian courtesan's forbidden love for the young Alfredo Germont challenged the values of 19th-century audiences. This striking production by Pier Luigi Pizzi recaptures those moral complexities by setting the action in Nazi-occupied Paris – giving Violetta and Alfredo's romance an even more tragic urgency. In this performance from 2005, Jesús López Cobos conducts the company of the Teatro Real, Madrid, while Norah Amsellem and José Bros head an impressive ensemble cast.