The starting point for Peter Mussbach’s 2003 production of La Traviata for the Aix-en-Provence festival is his knowledge, as one trained as a medical doctor, of the effects of TB on a person’s appearance.  He argues that the disease produces a strange kind of beauty with the skin translucent and pale.  So, here Mireille Delunsch, as Violetta, wears a white dress, a platinum wig and very pale powder throughout while everyone else is dressed in black.  Couple this with a high contrast and highly dramatic lighting plot and very sparse sets and you have the essence of the “look”.  The blocking and Personenregie reinforces this with Violetta often appearing to be an ethereal, not quite solid, presence surrounded by a rather coarse material world.

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