This is a 1998 performance from the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg of the original 1862 St Petersburg version of Verdi's La Forza del Destino. While the world famous version premiered in Italy in 1867 is the superior work, few will want to miss the rare opportunity to see and hear such a well-staged version of Verdi's first thoughts. Here the earlier libretto by Francesco Maria Piave is restored, the original, considerably darker ending is intact and even the sets are constructed to the 1862 designs. There are other differences, though the story remains the familiar mixture of love, misunderstanding and war, the characters ranging from the nobility to monks, soldiers and gypsies, the tone spanning low comedy to high drama. The result is a lavish production, full of life and vitality, shot through with musical urgency and some tremendously powerful singing. Particularly striking is Gegam Grigorian, making a commanding Don Alvaro, whose role here is rather more expansive than in the later version. Galina Gorchakova reprises her Leonara from the 1997 CD recording of the work with passionate intensity, and conductor Valéry Gergiev keeps the epic scale tightly focused. The direction for video unobtrusively brings out the heart of the drama on stage.

On the DVD: The disc is presented at 16:9 and is anamorphically enhanced for widescreen televisions. The result is a good but not exceptional picture with clear PCM stereo sound. Other than the booklet and the option to view with or without subtitles there are no special features. --Gary S. Dalkin

The dream-team combination of Plácido Domingo in the pit with Franco Zeffirelli as set-designer and director pays handsome dividends in this compelling live recording of La Traviata. The 2002 staging is from the intimate Teatro Giuseppe Verdi in the composer's home town of Busseto, a theatre in which promising young performers and players are often given a chance to work with more established artists. But judging from the clear, fresh voices and impressively mature stagecraft skills of both Stefania Bonfadelli and the handsome Scott Piper, they won't need a helping hand for much longer. Piper in particular has a wonderfully full, ringing tone and--heaven be praised!--a sensitive, intelligent pianissimo. Using period costumes, a minimum of props and a few sliding Perspex panels, Zeffirelli creates a handsome, small-scale production and as a director rarely puts a foot wrong--although simply by looking you wouldn't exactly be able to guess how Violetta earns her living. The young orchestra's inexperience shows through occasionally, but Domingo's sensitive accompanying skills (after all, Alfredo is a role he has sung many times himself) compensate for this.

On the DVD: La Traviata is presented in 16:9 ratio, with LPCM Stereo, AC3 Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 sound options. The picture quality is clear without being lustrous, but the small-scale staging never feels too cramped. There is a documentary about the making of the production and the relevance of the town of Busseto in Verdi's life. The opera has subtitles available in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. --Warwick Thompson

Performances of La Traviata stand or fall to an unusual extent on their principal soprano; the first thing that needs saying about this Glyndebourne performance is that Marie McLaughlin has all of the attributes needed for a role that is fundamentally a virtuoso one, no matter how emotionally involving it is as well. The point about Violetta is that she is, with absolute authenticity, all of the things she becomes in the course of the opera--the febrile socialite and yearning love of Act One, the quiet domesticated woman of Act Two who sacrifices her love for Alfredo to precisely the family values he has talked her into espousing, the dying penitent of Act Three. Walter McNeil is an impressive poetic Alfredo in whose successful courtship we can believe. He is also unusually good in Act Two, Scene Two where for once his public humiliation of Violetta is actually painful, which makes his repentance at her deathbed far more moving. Brent Ellis is solidly powerful as his father Germont--the duet in which he talks Violetta into renouncing his son and comes to value what he is destroying is one of the high points here, as it should be. Bernard Haitink conducts impressively.

On the DVD: As (unfortunately) usual with Arthaus Musik, the DVD contains no extra features worth mentioning past the usual subtitles in German, English and French, relegating discussion of the opera's stormy history to the booklet. --Roz Kaveney

This performance of Verdi's La Traviata comes from the Gran Teatro La Fenice, Venice in 1992. The intimacy and social realism of the story make it one of the most dramatically successful of all operas, while the score contains some of the finest music of the 19th century. Despite the strong production values and well-staged party scenes, any production of La Traviata stands or falls on the performers in the vital roles of the lovers Violetta and Alfredo, and that of Alfredo's father, Giorgio. Here Giorgio Zancanaro is suitably decent and morally serious as Giorgio, and Neil Shicoff makes a strong impression as an ordinary man suddenly overwhelmed by love. The drawback is that--and there is no polite way to say this--Edita Gruberova is not only too old to play the sparkling young society girl, Violetta, but she is a much better singer than she is an actress. She comes into her own in the tragic last act, but is otherwise awkward and uncomfortable when the part requires her to demonstrate confidence and sensuality. This remains a production with considerable merits, but overall a more dramatically, not to say visually, compelling version is that originally broadcast world-wide live from Paris in 2000 starring Eteri Gvazava and José Cura.

On the DVD: The production is presented at 4:3 with above average picture quality for a live opera DVD, and with excellent PCM stereo sound. The disc and booklet both offer a synopsis, but other than the option to watch with or without subtitles there are no special features. --Gary S. Dalkin

One of the best of Verdi's earlier operas, Macbeth has a distinctive energy to which, in this performance, conductor Sinopoli gives full rein. His excellent chorus--terrifyingly skittish witches, mournful exiles, sinister-facetious murderers, outraged and vengeful courtiers in the aftermath of Duncan's murder--is as much a participant as the principals, and the orchestral accompaniment reminds us that what the young Verdi lacked of his later subtlety he made up in sheer vigour. Renato Bruson is an extraordinary Macbeth, caught in a nightmare of his own making and unable to find release save through further killings and eventually self-destruction; Maria Zampieri has the sort of voice Verdi specified and which many productions avoid, a voice prepared to give its all, not to any sort of lyric beauty but to a harshness that is dramatically appropriate--this is a fine characterisation. Dennis O'Neill has comparatively little to do, but makes his vengeance aria a memorable reminder that guilt and shame are not all that this opera is about. --Roz Kaveney