Search - Giuseppe Verdi, Carlo Maria Giulini, Maria Callas :: Verdi - La Traviata / Maria Callas · di Stefano · Bastianini · Giulini

Meet Violetta Valéry, a woman who goes from one wealthy lover to the next, who lives in physical luxury and with a growing distress of spirit at the slow advance of a deadly illness. Then love enters her life unexpectedly. A young admirer at one of her lavish, meaningless parties pours out his soul to her, and she begins to hope that what remains of her empty life may be transfigured by love. It happens for a painfully short while; then her happiness is destroyed, first by the mandates of bourgeois morality (what the politicians now call "family values") and then by death. Maria Callas embodies this character as no other soprano ever has. Her colleagues are not quite up to her level, but her conductor is, and that's what really matters. --Joe McLellan