Svetla Vassileva (opera singer) Svetla Vassileva (opera singer) Svetla Vassileva (), born on September 9, 1965 in Dobrich, Bulgaria, is a Bulgarian opera singer, soprano. Her repertoire includes Desdemona in Otello, Leonora in La forza del destino, Violetta in La traviata, Alice Ford in Falstaff (Verdi), the title role in Madama Butterfly, La rondine, Suor Angelica and Manon Lescaut, Liu in Turandot (Puccini), the title role in Rusalka (Dvorak), Lisa in Pique Dame, Tatiana in Yevgeni Onegin (Tchaikovsky), the title role in Francesca da Rimini (Rachmaninov) and in Francesca da Rimini (Zandonai), Nedda in Pagliacci (Leoncavallo), Zemfira in Aleko (Rachmaninoff), and many others. She
La Dame aux Camélias as "Camille" and 16 versions have been performed at Broadway theatres alone. The title character is Marguerite Gautier, who is based on Marie Duplessis, the real-life lover of author Dumas, "fils". Written by Alexandre Dumas "fils" (1824–1895) when he was 23 years old, and first published in 1848, ' is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author's brief love affair with a courtesan, Marie Duplessis. Set in mid-19th-century France, the novel tells the tragic love story between fictional characters Marguerite Gautier, a demimondaine or courtesan suffering from consumption, and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois. Marguerite is nicknamed ' () because