"...This performance from Covent Garden is in better sounds than any of he others, and though it has been issued on various labels, this ICA Classics recording is the best I have heard.”

 

“Maria Callas’s Violetta was one of the wonders of our age: scarily elemental, supernaturally brilliant. After many unofficial releases, the tape of her 20 June 1958 London performance has now been finely remastered as part of ICA Classics’ initial releases. (An odd mistake in the booklet suggests this was a private tape, but it was actually a live BBC Home Service broadcast.) Callas sounds less full-voiced, more restrained, than in her 1958 Lisbon performance, but the combination of vocal depth and fragile, eloquent virtuosity is unbeatable and the emotional collapse across the three acts is heartbreaking. Cesare Valletti’s Alfredo can’t match Alfredo Kraus in Lisbon, but Nicola Rescigno’s conducting lifts the performance to the highest level. A classic indeed.”

 

 

“...The overall clarity of the sound is a pleasure, with the immediacy of Callas’s vocal presence proving genuinely startling at first hearing.”

 

“Callas’s most devoted admirers find this Covent Garden version, her last recorded Violetta, to be definitive. It is the performance I find myself listening to most frequently — both for pleasure and as an example of the role’s possibilities when teaching young singers.”

 

“...this performance preserves what I believe to be by far the best souvenir we have of Callas as Violetta and for once she is properly supported by a distinguished cast. ”

 

“...Don’t miss this one: sonics aside, it’s the only Traviata you’ll ever need.”

 

“...The 1958 Covent Garden performance remains one of the most treasured 122 minutes in opera — ever!”