Product Details

• Actors: Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazón, Thomas Hampson
• Format: Classical, Color
• Language: Italian (DTS-HD 5.1), Italian (PCM Stereo)
• Subtitles: German, English, Italian, French, Spanish
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
• DVD Release Date: May 26, 2009
• Run Time: 150 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001MRMRS8
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,932 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
  • #84 in Movies & TV > Blu-ray > Performing Arts
• For more information about "La Traviata [Blu-ray]" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

The infamous and uniquely compelling opera event of 2005 is now available on Blu-Ray DVD. The Salzburg Festival's La Traviata features the unforgettable performances of Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazón, and Thomas Hampson in a dramatic staging by Willy Decker. Features Conductor Carlo Rizzi and the Wiener Philharmoniker. Also including a special documentary: Behind the Scenes--The Rehearsals for LA TRAVIATA, and an introduction by Rolando Villazón.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A case of the Emperor's new clothes?... Lovely performances nonetheless... Beautiful DVD memento, July 7, 2006

By 

dooby - See all my reviews

This review is from: Verdi - La Traviata / Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazon, Thomas Hampson, Helene Schneidermann, Salvatore Cordella, Carlo Rizzi, Salzburg Opera (Deluxe Edition) (DVD)

This is the by now famous and not a little controversial 2005 Salzburg Festival production of La Traviata. It's a live performance recorded over five nights at the Grosses Festspielhaus with the best bits spliced together to form this video. It was to all intents and purposes a tremendous success. The audio CD has already become the fastest selling opera CD in Austrian history. It earned platinum status earlier this year, a near miraculous feat for a full-length opera recording in this day and age.

The performances are almost universally outstanding. The star of this opera is without doubt the lovely Russian soprano Anna Netrebko who sings the role of Violetta. One critic called it "the Netrebko show." Besides a gorgeous voice, she is a stunning beauty and a joy just to look at. Rolando Villazon is also superb in his role as Alfredo. And Thomas Hampson makes a very distinguished Germont. There is little to fault here in terms of performance.

The production itself reflects a continuing tendency to reinterpret or reinvent opera. This is a post-modernist, ultra minimalist staging of Traviata. There is barely anything onstage except for 2 or 3 couches and a large clock. Most of the time you just see the bare white stage with the singers. The final scene takes place on a totally empty stage, with just the performers singing. I wonder if European audiences are really so sick of traditional operatic staging that they must resort to this stripdown version or is it more the case of pretentious avant-garde producers run amuck? I may be old fashioned but I still want to see some semblance of a set when I watch opera.

The fact that the performers are still able to hold the audience spellbound despite the utter paucity of the set and stage design, speaks volumes for the luminous quality of these perfomances. But I agree with the other reviewers here who wrote that this shouldn't be a first choice recommendation and should not be someone's first introduction to the opera. Someone new to the plot would be quite lost, as all the action takes place on the same 1 or 2 couches in front of the same large white clock.

The DVD is presented in the new widescreen format of 1.78:1 (enhanced for widescreen TV). Picture quality is excellent with sharp images and warm, vibrant, accurate colors. Black levels are perfectly set. Audio is available in 2.0 PCM Stereo (CD quality) and DTS 5.1. Sound is gorgeously rich and sumptuous. The original Italian libretto is included as optional subtitles, along with 5 other languages including English. The onscreen menu only allows direct access to the 3 Acts, although there are a total of 39 individual cues which you can navigate with your remote. The second disc contains about an hour's worth of extras, mainly a 43min documentary on the rehearsals with interviews of the participants, an introduction to the opera by Villazon and a trailer for Anna's other DVD - "The Woman, The Voice." There is a 30 page souvenir booklet with color photographs of the production as well as production notes and a detailed synopsis. My only criticism here is the packaging. For an expensive "Premium Edition" DVD, the carboard foldout format, without even a slipcase to hold it in, is disgraceful. I can't even put it on the shelf without it falling open and tipping over. Still it is good to finally have a memento of this lovely performance. Opera lovers who cannot bear the staging (or lack of it) may want to buy the audio CD instead.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Abandon All Pre-Conceived Notions And Watch It! It's Amazing!, February 3, 2007

By 

Christopher L. Dolmetsch (Hurricane, WV USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Verdi - La Traviata / Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazon, Thomas Hampson, Helene Schneidermann, Salvatore Cordella, Carlo Rizzi, Salzburg Opera (Deluxe Edition) (DVD)

When watching this starkly modern rendition of Verdi's all-too-familiar masterpiece "La Traviata" it is best to abandon all pre-conceived notions about how this work should look and feel and just watch it for what it is: A new reading of a well-known opera. Not only is the singing universally outstanding, but the conceptualizing is refreshing and very much exciting. I, too, had my misgivings during the opening act's party scene, but I was willing to give the staging some time and discovered myself drawn in. By the end I was just beginning to fathom the ideas behind the use of a large clock to mark the passing of time and the sinister figure who later became the doctor in act three. This work will either impress or depress, but I guarantee it will not fail to leave its mark.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modernized Staging of Verdi Classic Is Truly Better Seen Than Just Heard, July 24, 2006

By 

Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Verdi - La Traviata / Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazon, Thomas Hampson, Helene Schneidermann, Salvatore Cordella, Carlo Rizzi, Salzburg Opera (Deluxe Edition) (DVD)

With some reservations, I enjoyed the two-disc CD recording of this fulsome performance of Verdi's "La Traviata" released late last year. Under the direction of Carlo Rizzi leading the Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic), the classic opera represents a prime opportunity to intertwine grand romantic melodrama with many of the composer's most famous arias and duets. Even though there are choruses and set pieces, it is really more a chamber opera, and you need three powerfully sculpted voices to make this a momentous occasion. Removing the visual element, the performance feels variable in spots despite the immense talent involved.

However, now that I can see and appreciate director Willi Decker's spare, modernist staging at the 2005 Salzburg Festival on this 2006 Deluxe Edition DVD package, the opera becomes a more emotionally transcendent experience. He takes the passing of time as his primary leitmotif in the form of a gigantic clock with Death taking an ever-present human form. The costuming is stylishly modern-dress, while the few color-coordinated set pieces would look appropriate in an Upper West Side art gallery. Based on Alexandre Dumas's play, "The Lady of the Camellias", the opera's tragic love story is the same in this adaptation, but the overall attitude reflects a greater sense of liberation with the period melodrama mostly excised. Purists will be offended, especially those married to the Callas or more recent Angela Gheorghiu versions.

As the passionate Violetta Valéry, Russian soprano Anna Netrebko is an inarguably stunning woman made for the camera. Less the courtesan of the classic version and more a hedonistic party girl (like a more melancholy Holly Golightly), parading in her deep red cocktail dress, she convincingly performs the role with alternating waves of gusto and poignancy. Vocally, Netrebko complements her fiery presence with an impressive performance that gives way to equal parts great passion and deep love once she discovers renewed life with her lover Alfredo. Offering shimmering roulades, she nails her much anticipated Act I climax, "E stano...Ah, fors'è lui...Sempre libera", and maximizes her lower register in her burnished handling of the final aria, "Gran dio! Morir si giovane!". Her less-than-perfect Italianate diction is not as problematic here as it is on CD when we are robbed of her beauty.

Given the dominance of Violetta, Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón more than holds his own with Netrebko as the smitten Alfredo. In fact, he is a better actor than she in displaying his character's tentative nature at the beginning, followed in turn by his swooning romanticism, seething anger and broken-hearted resignation. Displaying an exceptionally agile voice and an almost improvisational-sounding style in his phrasing and inflections, he brings his arsenal of skills together most effectively in his Act II opening, "Lunge de lei... De' miei bollenti spiriti...O mio rimorso". In this scene, Alfredo and Violetta prance around in persistent afterglow in their floral bathrobes on a matching floral sofa.

In fact, there is a great deal of physicality in the production to make the sexual tension reverberate, and the party-loving, black-suited chorus is equally as animated. All the while, Netrebko and Villazón generate true chemistry while blending seamlessly in their duets. American baritone Thomas Hampson comes across much better on the DVD than the CD, where he is recognizably the weak link. Looking more engaged onstage, he brings the appropriate emotional fervor to his confrontation scenes with Violetta and sounds effectively resolute in his ending aria in Act II, "Di provenza il mar, il suol". The death scene still seems too elongated for the drama preceding it, and Rizzi does not help with his lugubrious pacing at this juncture.

The entire opera is on the first disc of the 2006 two-DVD set, and it is blessedly captured with clarity both visually and aurally. The second disc contains a number of extras, the most important being a 45-minute behind-the-scenes featurette chronicling the painstaking preparation of the production. Netrebko and an especially precocious Villazón are interviewed throughout. Villazón also does a three-minute introduction of the opera in German, obviously done for its TV airing. There is an automatic slide show of photos from the production set to the "Brindisi", a Netrebko discography, and lastly, a ten-minute highlights segment of Netrebko's rather self-aggrandizing video collection, "The Woman...The Voice".