Il passato come «avvenir migliore»

The story of Alphonsine Plessis has been subject to remediation since its birth: Alexandre Dumas (son) transferred his autobiographical events into the novel La Dame aux camélias. Adapted into a play, Giuseppe Verdi used it as source for La traviata. The opera, in turn, has been the subject of adaptations from theatre to dance, from cinema to graphic novels and so on. Studies in remediations have flourished over the last decades; focusing primarily on the diffusion of technological innovation and on the use of new forms of entertainment, they have produced a considerable enrichment of methodologies (see for example contributions by Jay D. Bolter and Richard Grusin, by Marcia J. Citron and Emanuele Senici on opera on screen). Nevertheless, some cases have not been sufficiently studied so far, mostly because they seem to propose a return to “traditional” forms of remediation, without an interest in technology and “new” media. In my article, I consider one of the most recent and interesting of these cases: the play Traviata: vous méritez un avenir meilleur, an adaptation of Verdi’s La traviata by Benjamin Lazar presented in Paris in 2016.
Based on the studies mentioned above, I analyse Lazar’s play, specifically how a form of remediation apparently regressive — described as a reinvention of La Dame aux camélias of 1852 — is in constant dialogue with media resources introduced by the digital era, utilizing them in a live performance. I conclude with meditations on the potential relevance of this play, and of the videos of it that have been produced, for the study in general of remediation in opera and in the media related to it.