Alexandre Dumas fils live with his father. There he met Marie Duplessis, a young courtesan who would be the inspiration for the character Marguerite Gauthier in his romantic novel "La Dame aux camélias" ("The Lady of the Camellias"). Adapted into a play, it was titled "Camille" in English and became the basis for Verdi's 1853 opera, "La traviata", Duplessis undergoing yet another name change, this time to Violetta Valéry. Although he admitted that he had done the adaptation because he needed the money, he had great success with the play, which started his career as a dramatist. He was not only more renowned
Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi to solve the problem, which was accomplished by incorporating elements of Milan's La Scala opera house. The "Nuovo" became a mixture of La Fenice on the inside and La Scala on the exterior. Several name changes have occurred during the theatre's lifetime, the first in 1821 when it became the "Teatro Grande" and it was under this name that the theatre was the site of two Verdi opera premieres: "Il corsaro" in 1848 (featuring the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, who Verdi married in 1859, in the leading role) and "Stiffelio", a production which Verdi supervised - not without controversy - in