Verdi - La Traviata / Levine, Stratas, Domingo | Teresa Stratas, Plácido Domingo

Verdi - La Traviata / Levine, Stratas, Domingo | Teresa Stratas, Plácido Domingo | La Traviata at its best

DVDs:

Verdi - La Traviat...

	Verdi - La Traviata / Levine, Stratas, Domingo Teresa Stratas, Plácido Domingo Universal Studios, 1999 average customer review:based on 85 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

It just doesn't get any better than this!

As a longtime admirer of Zefferelli's sensuous and expansive opera films, I find this video production more enthralling than the onstage productions I've seen -- although they were top-notch.

It's just impossible to beat Zefferelli's larger-than-life view of the world, and with Teresa Stratas as the frail heroine of this story, we opera fans have found nirvana!

Further words won't do it justice. Just buy it and see for yourself.

La Traviata at its best

A truly beautiful rendition of this opera with a great looking cast and gorgeous sets. A must have.

La Traviata

La Traviata Film directed by Franco Zeffirelli based on the Verdi's opera. It is an excellent movie and the DVD is excellent too.

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A lavish film production by Zeffirelli

This could have been the ideal version to have on DVD.
The opera is presented in a grand and lavish décor that will be hard to reproduce on a stage performance. Act 1 in Violetta's house in Paris is if anything too rich, but splendid too watch. Her getting drunk and violent at the end is rather pointless. At the beginning of act 2, Zeffirelli repeats the music of the opening of act 1, to show Violetta's departure for the countryside. Totally unnecessary, as Verdi never wrote anything of the kind. The gardens and the country-house in act 2 are wonderful, so is the photography. In act 2 scene 2, we are back in Paris in a very similar house to act 1, too similar in a way. The party is good, the dancers are good and the staging of the drama, excellent. In act 3, Zeffiirelli cuts away all the music before Violetta's big are "Addio del passato" gaining 5 minutes and loosing the point of her being generous, even on her death-bed by giving all her money to the poor. At the end, Violetta seems to run around too much for a woman about to die from consumption. Now for the singers. Teresa Stratas has an ideal face and figure for the role and her acting is excellent. She copes vocally with most things but really goes to pieces in "Sempre libera" screaming instead of singing at the end. Domingo is wonderful throughout, both vocally and visually. Macneil is adequate in every way, but not exceptional. James Levine, in my opinion is a bad conductor when it comes to Verdi, and this score shows his weaknesses. The music simply does not flow as it should, and the climaxes are poor. I do not know who is better on DVD but on CD try Giulini, Serafin, Kleiber, Toscanini, or even Muti to see what I mean.
If you want a spectacular Traviata on DVD, I feel this is the one to get. It could have easily been so much better, but this is true of most things. My advice, get it quick because it seems to be disappearing from the catalogues.

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A special opera film

When this film was first released in New York, I went to see it, and by the end, I couldn't leave the theater because it left me an absolute mess. I was such a mess that when I finally did venture out into daylight, I had no sense of where I was or where I was going. I stopped in at a local diner for lunch, and as I was leaving, the girl behind the register sympathetically said, "Have a good day." The way she said it finally made me laugh and snap out of it. I later went to see the film four more times.

No film, operatic or otherwise, has ever moved me quite like this one. Only after distancing myself from it a while can I take another look at it. There are definite flaws: the cuts, the notorious engineering that makes the score play a half-tone flat thoughout (maybe that's why Stratas doesn't always sound her best), the entire production is way overdressed... But still, this is one of the best opera films ever made, with many touching moments in the more intimate scenes, and Stratas wrings the pathos out of it for all its worth. It deserves a special place in the collection.

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