Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata Blu-ray Movie Review

No need to double dip on this re-release if you already own the first one. Unfortunately, there's no really compelling reason to get it for the first time, either.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 8, 2010

How can you be sure a home video format has reached its mature stage? Why, when you’re offered a “Special Edition” of a previously released title, of course. A classical music title. ArtHaus Musik stepped into the Blu-ray arena a couple of years ago with this lusciously staged, if unevenly performed, version of La Traviata, one of the glories of 19th century opera. It was a bare bones release, with only a nice illustrated booklet to accompany a disc which didn’t even have a setup option on the main menu (something this new release does not fix). Now comes this purported “Special Edition,” which, if Amazon sales figures are to be believed, is indeed convincing a fair number of consumers to either double dip and get the release a second time, or to finally splurge and add it to their collections for the first time. Unfortunately, this re-release offers a patently lame “bonus,” basically a 70 minute promo puff piece featuring snippets of other ArtHaus Musik opera releases. Even worse, it’s a straight port of their previous release, and is therefore hampered by one of the worse audio mixes in the relatively brief history of Blu-ray opera.

Alexander Dumas’ novel La Dame aux Camélias has been one of the most adapted pieces in the history of literature, spawning everything from the eponymous ballet to numerous films (Camille) to Verdi’s iconic opera, which had its premiere in 1853. For a piece which has entered the Olympian sphere in terms of the history of music theater, it’s rather interesting to note the La Traviata’s debut was met with almost unanimous critical brickbats. Verdi famously responded that time would tell whether the fault lay with him personally or the singers assigned to perform some of the most difficult arias in the 19th century repertoire. Obviously, the latter turned out the be the case. Unfortunately, that same inability to completely master Verdi’s musical language also at least partially hampers this particular production from Italy’s vaunted La Scala.

"Pardon me, I feel a tubercular sneeze coming on."

Opera thrives on tropes like starcrossed love affairs and horrible diseases. There's probably no better example of the weaving together of those two elements than La Traviata, Giuseppe Verdi's iconic piece about a "fallen woman," courtesan Violette Valery, and her tragic love affair with Alfredo, a man whose family connections preclude him from settling down with a woman of notorious reputation. While one would assume that all the elements would be perfectly aligned for this particular production, with a lauded film director (Liliana Cavani) at the helm, the prince of Italy’s opera composers providing the material, and the most famous opera house in the country mounting the production, but this admittetdly visually opulent production suffers from overkill and a strangely brittle vocal performance by Angela Gheorghiu as Violetta.

Anyone who loves classic opera knows that the genre is filled with patently stereotypical characters and plot devices. La Traviata travels the well-worn operatic territory of lovers who are never going to end up happily ever after, as well as a fatally doomed heroine (again by that operatic bugaboo, tuberculosis), and wraps it in some of the most gorgeous and florid music Verdi ever wrote. This is certainly one of the most massively produced Traviatas in recent memory, with the chorus literally filling the huge La Scala stage, and with Lorin Maazel conducting the always excellent La Scala orchestra with his customary aplomb. While this is a stunningly produced version of the warhorse, with sets and costumes that are opulent enough to elicit gasps of amazement, and is quite creatively directed for television, with evidently handheld cameras that traipse between the players, traveling up and downstage at times for a very "up close and personal" look at the production, it is still a maddeningly underwhelming performance, the bulk of the fault lying unfortunately with Gheorghiu.

In an operatic world where histrionics and hyperbole are often the norm, Violetta is one of the more complex characters in this often largely two-dimensional environment, and she must be equal parts flirt and tragically flawed heroine. Unfortunately Gheorghiu brings little of Violetta's coquettish nature to the mix, and routinely overplays the "Camille" aspects of the character. Add to this some rather unappealing vocal work, especially on Verdi's more melismatic moments, and you have a central performance that tends to drag down everything around it. Gheorghiu, among the most infamously temperamental sopranos working in opera today (which takes real fortitude, if you catch my drift), obviously needs a firm, if nurturing, directorial hand to help mold her performances. Cavani may have simply been out of her element here, and Maazel strikes me as perhaps too much of a “nice guy” conductor to challenge his star diva, which leaves Gheorghiu free rein (or indeed reign) to flaunt her overacting and less than stellar singing throughout the evening.

Luckily, tenor Ramon Vargas is considerably more appealing and affecting as Alfredo, Violetta's infatuated lover who finds himself in an untenable predicament as his father attempts to break him away from the woman he loves in order to maintain the family's reputation. Vargas handles the bel canto aspects of Verdi's score immaculately, even if his physical deportment is a bit on the stilted side. The choral work is, as you might expect, excellent here, though balance issues I will discuss in the audio section below often leave the soloists floundering amidst the massed ensemble voices.

ArtHaus Musik is certainly to be commended for bringing so many wonderful classics, and even lesser known pieces, to Blu-ray. Whether we really needed a “Special Edition” of this opulent but unsatisfying La Traviata I’ll leave to wiser heads to decide. This really could have been a Special Edition with some sort of historical documentary on the Dumas novel and the many adaptations it’s inspired, as well as a tweaking of the audio mix, which has a number of problems. The issues with Gheorghiu may have been insurmountable, but at least the rest of the production and this particular Blu-ray would have had more to recommend it.

Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

La Traviata arrives for a second time on Blu-ray with the original release's decent if not spectacular AVC encoded 1080i 1.78:1 image intact. I actually like the image quality of this Blu-ray a bit more than my colleague Svet Atanasov did when he reviewed the original release. With Cavani's filmic approach to staging and camera placement, this Blu-ray offers some very nice detail, with often sumptuously saturated colors in the costumes and sets. Where the image quality suffers a bit is in sharpness; there's a noticeable haziness to several mid-range shots which may be at least partially due to stage lighting. Close-ups, however, reveal a wealth of detail, perhaps too much in Georghiu's case: it's hard to be a coquette when your face is pancaked, but not enough to cover the bugaboo of every aging actress, unsightly wrinkles.

Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I'm fairly certain traviata is not etymologically related to 'travesty,' and yet that's the word that comes to mind in one of the poorer audio mixes to make it to operatic Blu-ray. Notice, I said mixes. There seems to be nothing endemically wrong with the actual recording or fidelity of either the DTS-HD MA 7.1 or LPCM 2.0 tracks, but good heavens, is the balance ever off on both of these options. Voices simply disappear into the orchestra mass, and even volume with any given soloist is widely variable. It's baffling, really, and all the more the shame as Maazel is at the top of his game with the La Scala orchestra and chorus, and they sound magnificent. As much as I take Georghiu to task, she's not helped by this mix, which often buries her coloratura moments in a messy wash of strings. Unfortunately, even choosing the narrower 2.0 soundfield doesn't help much (though it's incrementally better than the 7.1). Someone wasn't manning the dials very carefully in post with this recording, and it really is too bad.

Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Simply and completely absurd. This 'Special Edition' offers nothing other than 70 minutes of brief snippets of other ArtHaus Musik opera Blu-rays. And it omits the lavish illustrated booklet that accompanied the original release. Ridiculous.

Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm sure we'll ultimately get a stellar La Traviata on Blu. This has a lot of redeeming qualities, notably the physical production and Maazel's conducting, but the mix is lamentable and Georghiu never quite catches the gist of one of the most tragically flawed heroines in all opera.