Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Verdi: La Traviata

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata ("The Fallen Woman," 1853) is a warhorse of the international operatic repertoire, never absent from the operatic stage and much recorded. All the great singers of the twentieth century have essayed it. One of the very greatest, soprano Maria Callas handled the role of Violetta, the "fallen woman" superbly onstage and her voice was captured for posterity in 1958 in recorded performances both in London's Covent Garden and Lisbon's Teatro São Carlos. The "Covent Garden" La Traviata I featured in an unauthorized recording (ICA Classics CDs) on Sunday, September 30, 2012, and prior to that the "Lisbon" La Traviata (EMI Classics CDs) on Sunday, February 7, 1999.

In the twenty-first century the young Russian soprano Anna Netrebko triumphed as Violetta in the 2005 production mounted at the Salzburg Festival. She shared her triumph with tenor Rolando Villazon as Germont the younger and baritone Thomas Hampson as Germont the elder. Carlo Rizzi directed the Vienna Philharmonic and the chorus of the Vienna State Opera. Deutsche Grammophon released this Salzburg La Traviata immediately following the festival in 2005 in its Festspieldokumente series.