As one would expect, there are wonderful moments in the Garden Scene (for me, the writing of the letter to Alfredo the most touching of all), and H. D. Rosenthal, Opera’s critic of the evening, speaks of “Dite alla giovine” holding the house spellbound. I believe it; yet the words sound as if they’re being intoned underwater. It is in Act 2, Scene 2 that Callas’ performance becomes consistently spellbinding, and in the fashion of a modern singing actress. Any good soprano can create a moving effect with her entrance at “Alfredo, Alfredo, di questo core,” after the hushed ensemble reaction to Germont’s reproof of his son (“In a very weak voice, and with passion,” reads the instruction). Callas takes this literally, stripping her voice down to a faint, bleak kernel of tone that is no more than a word on a pitch, a sound that we hardly recognize as operatic and that is a step beyond the pianissimi I recall from her (or anyone else), recorded or live. And she sticks with this to the end, bringing her voice out to its recognizable self only for the moments when Violetta summons all her remaining energies. It’s possible that this “choice” was, again, something she felt as a vocal necessity (though actually, it’s not at all easy to sustain, or to draw an audience into, through such a long stretch). That doesn’t really matter to us, listening, because it creates the same illusion of something that’s obviously the truth, except that no one’s ever done it like that before, that Brooks and Corsaro achieved in their way. The emotionally violent confrontation with Alfredo has broken her spirit, and she will not recover. I wish I’d been there.

It’s only for Callas, and the fine orchestral work under Nicola Rescigno, that one would need this recording. In my earlier Traviata article, I spoke admiringly of Valletti’s singing of “De’ miei bollenti spiriti,” as heard on the Monteux studio recording with Rosanna Carteri and Warren. And the tenor, so cherishable in the lighter lyric roles and in recital, starts well here, too, and with the greater urgency of live performance. “Un dì, felice” receives a finely tinted delineation. But beginning with the overly-open ascending lines at “Dell’universo immemore” in the aria, his slender instrument goes increasingly off the rails, and by the end everything above F on an open vowel is distressingly raw. The Germont is Mario Zanasi, who had also sung the part in the Met performances with Callas in February. He had a warm, sizable baritone that made him an above-average Marcello, Enrico, etc. in those years, and he returned to New York with the Rome Opera in the summer of 1967 as the Doge in I Due Foscari, singing strongly if without much in the way of a classical guidance of line. Here, the top of the voice responds well, but there’s a shallowness and lack of firmness in the middle that detracts from the beauty and authority of his singing—it’s High Provincial in grade. It’s good to hear a real voice, Marie Collier’s, as Flora.