Verdi: La Traviata

Stage Designer Brian Thomson

Costume Designer Tess Schofield

Lighting Designer John Rayment

La Traviata, one of the world’s best loved romantic operas, and is performed under the stars on a floating, mirrored stage in Sydney Harbour, with the city, Opera House and Harbour Bridge acting as a stunning backdrop.

Giuseppe Verdi's captivating music is performed with the orchestra concealed in a studio beneath the stage to ensure the finest amplified sound combines with the superlative singing of the cast. With the singers discreetly miked, the recorded sound is presented here in superb quality.

Emma Matthews is continually being garnered with praise - ‘Emma Matthews could inspire the dead, turning in one of the finest readings of this role I’ve ever heard’ (International Record Review on Rigoletto), ‘As Gilda, Emma Matthews is outstanding’ (Opera Now on Rigoletto) – and doesn’t disappoint.

Includes a glittering Swarovski chandelier illuminating the stage and fireworks decorating Sydney Harbour’s sky-line, which render this production as something truly spectacular.

Studio recording, 1980

La Traviata – the ultimate opera of love and loss – is a great favourite of opera-goers. To coincide with Opera Australia’s Traviata production in the spectacular setting of “Opera on the Harbour”, Eloquence releases Joan Sutherland’s first recording of La Traviata, complete on 2 CDs. It is for many her greatest recorded portrayal of the doomed heroine Violetta. Her Alfredo is the ‘simply supreme’ (Gramophone) Carlo Bergonzi and Sir John Pritchard conducts a ‘most persuasive, well-balanced and well-timed account’ (Gramophone) of this magnificent opera.

Maria Callas (1923-1977) needs no introduction as she was quite simply one of the greatest singers of the 20th century. Any recording is of major importance and this Traviata from 1958 given in London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden is no exception.

Peter Heyworth in the Observer commented, ‘it was a performance of outstanding distinction and musicality, full of details that illuminated again and again the part as though for the first time’.

Opera News said, ‘there must have been many Verdi lovers who felt at last that they had come face to face with Violetta herself...’

John Ardoin in his book The Callas Legacy was very enthusiastic about the performance, not only Callas but also the Germont of Mario Zanasi for example, ‘Zanasi’s intrinsic musicality combined with Callas’s wealth of insights to bring the lengthy second act scene between Germont and Violetta to a living realisation. This duet is a study in contrasts, tensions and releases on the highest expressive level’.

Of Callas herself, Ardoin went on to say ‘it is in the final Act that Callas makes the tragedy of Violetta most immediate. The opening recitatives and “Addio del passato” are from another world…Callas’ Violetta is summed up in the strain “Se una pudica vergine” sung in a half-lit legato of breathtaking eloquence’. Ardoin praised the conductor Nicola Rescigno who ‘brings sanity and song to the performance and was remarkably at one with Callas in the ends she sought’.

This recording drawn from private tapes has been remastered by Paul Baily using ICA’s Ambient Mastering process which has enhanced and widened the sound considerably. Here is his description: “Our Ambient Remastering process creates a sense of space and width to a mono, or very narrow stereo, recording. No artificial reverberation is added in this process, so that it remains faithful to the natural acoustic of the original”.

Full track-list and synopsis in English, German and French