The Lady of the Camelias

From humble beginnings, she rose to the condition of a sophisticated and desired courtesan, a recklessly extravagant, art-loving demi-mondaine mined by tuberculosis, a sickness the 1800s traditionally saw, with morbid tenderness, as exclusive to truly pure girls. Marguerite Gautier is the heart of The Lady of the Camelias , which Alexandre Dumas fils had originally written as a novel and later, in 1852, adapted to the stage. This text is a pinnacle of unwholesome late Romantic imagination, and thus highly interesting to Miguel Loureiro, a scenic creator who enjoys giving new venues to ghosts and hauntings from the past. His The Dama das Camélias is close to another one of his recent productions: Paris – Sarah – Lisboa (2017), “a fabulous reverie” about the actress Sarah Bernhardt, whose greatest roles include Phaedra, Hamlet and… Marguerite Gautier. Instead of chasing modernity’s every whim, this actor and director is more interested in exploring mysteries and enigmas. Confronted with such a sphinx-like character, Miguel Loureiro cannot keep himself from throwing more and more question marks her way. “Which excesses in Marguerite Gautier can still be of use to ourselves? The clear enunciation of an unfathomable state of mind? A brief philosophical essay on the vertigo of beauty? A paean to love’s decay? The eroticisation of the theatre by Romantic smoothness?”