La Dame aux Camélias 1878 "Scribner's Monthly" reported that "not one other play by Dumas, "fils" has been received with favor out of France". The success of the play inspired Giuseppe Verdi to put the story to music. His work became the 1853 opera "La traviata", set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. The female protagonist, Marguerite Gautier, is renamed Violetta Valéry. "La Dame aux Camélias" has been adapted for some 20 different motion pictures in numerous countries and in a wide variety of languages. The role of Marguerite Gautier has been played on screen by Sarah Bernhardt, María Félix, Clara Kimball
Giuseppe Verdi and Strepponi left Paris in July 1849, the immediate cause being an outbreak of cholera, and Verdi went directly to Busseto to continue work on completing his latest opera, "Luisa Miller", for a production in Naples later in the year. Verdi was committed to the publisher Giovanni Ricordi for an opera—which became "Stiffelio"—for Trieste in the Spring of 1850; and, subsequently, following negotiations with La Fenice, developed a libretto with Piave and wrote the music for "Rigoletto" (based on Victor Hugo's "Le roi s'amuse") for Venice in March 1851. This was the first of a sequence of three operas (followed