The Real Traviata

Weis traces his protagonist's short but event-filled life - she died at the age of 23 - in painstaking detail. He also offers new insights into the genesis of Alexandre Dumas's fictionalised accounts of her life and of Verdi's opera. This book will intrigue fans of La traviata, but its broader account of the treatment of women in early 19th-century France deserves a wider readership. * Alexandra Wilson, BBC Music Magazine *
Weis's ability in making this work not only a masterpiece of research, but also a captivating book, is truly admirable. The author operates detailed reconstructions and descriptions of the locations and contexts where the events took place and frequently uses the accounts of eyewitnesses, the abundance of sources always paired up with an expressive and deeply empathic, yet clear and objective tone ... Finally, the author operates a continuous, deep contextualization of the story he tells within the wider historical, social and cultural context, tirelessly linking events and details to coeval society, artists and debates, making--in a word--Marie Duplessis a catalyst for many other stories. This book thus appeals with equal strength not only to theatre, opera, society and literature historians, but also to all those who wish to uncover a story that is able like few others to connect facts, personalities and great works of art. * H-France *
The Real Traviata offers the fullest account we have of Marie Duplessis, her cultural universe, and her successive mythologization... In the range of exciting documentation he has uncovered, Weis highlights the limits of her first nineteenth-century biographer, Romain Vienne. * Tom Stammers (Durham University), European History Quarterly, Vol. 47 *
[Weis's] delineation of [Duplessis's] apotheosis as Verdi's Violetta is masterly and moving. Weis is an opera oficionado, and the discussions of the evolution of Piave's libretto, the autobiographical echoes of Verdi's own life and sublimity of the score of La Traviata itself bring an extraordinary and revelatory breadth of understanding to the work. * Lisa Hilton, Times Literary Supplement *
[A] scrupulous biography ... Weis has meticulously combed public records, private letters, libraries, archives and historic sites throughout France, fusing fact, myth, lore and hypothesis to breathe life into the woman who would inspire the novel and play La Dame aux Camélias, by Alexander Dumas fils, Verdis Traviata, and screen portrayals ranging from Garbo to Julia Roberts ... [His] description of Maries Cinderella rise from waif to café society is heartbreaking ... * Opera News *
[A] superbly readable and meticulously researched biography... It is hard to think of a more dramatic life, from a horrific childhood to the glamour of high society, and Weis tells it with operatic pathos. * Sunday Times, Bee Wilson *
[A] scrupulously researched biography ... Weis powerfully delineates the social forces that victimized Duplessis, while still managing to convey the independence of spirit that made her so captivating. * The New Yorker *
Weis's accomplished depiction shows an intelligent, worldly and wise young woman who managed to keep her lovers (and her husband) as friends. * New Statesman *
An instructive account og an extraordinary world. * John Robert Brown, Classical Music magazine *
René Weis retraces, with meticulous attention to detail, tact, and sensitivity, the thousand hidden and not so hidden facets of a woman who was celebrated, courted, and adored by the 'Tout-Paris', and who died rejected and ignored by all ... an excellent and accomplished book that holds the reader in its spell throughout, because it engages with, and reveals, a woman who was honest, lovable, and 'of good company' * Hervé Le Mansec, Res Musica *
... well-researched, meticulously sifting the claims and counter-claims of previous biographers ... this book will provide an intriguing glimpse of the poignant and often bitter realities' of Violetta * VerdiPerspektiven *