Verdi’s La Traviata is the world’s most popular opera, performed well over 3,000 times in the past five years alone. But when it was staged in London for the first time in 1856 it caused a scandal that reverberated through Victorian England, the echoes of which can still be heard today. The story of a dying courtesan, Violetta, who sacrifices herself for her lover, Alfredo, touched on some of the most incendiary issues of the time: male desire and female sexuality, public morality and private hypocrisy, the sanctity of marriage and the fear of disease. In this hour-long special, Amanda Vickery and Tom Service tell the dramatic story of La Traviata’s London premiere and its stormy aftermath. Specially shot highlights from the opera, filmed in collaboration with Opera North, will take audiences to the dramatic heart of the story, while Amanda and Tom explore the unlikely triumph of an operatic heroine who the critics reviled but the women of London came to love.