La Traviata (complete opera recorded live in 1949)

"For the most part, a vocal feast awaits you, broadcast live from the Met on January 22, 1949... The principals in this marvelous La Traviata are captured in their exultant primes. As Violetta, Eleanor Steber can do anything. Verdi's florid writing fazes her not one bit: she brings fluid defiance to Sempre Libera's quick, downward phrases, and instills Verdi's long lyrical lines with ravishing, floating colors. Robert Merrill is a freer, more supple Germont than his driven portrayal in the famed Toscanini broadcast two years earlier, with just as huge a sonority. Heard in his first Met Alfredo, Giuseppi di Stefano fares best in the first act, and becomes increasingly erratic as he pushes his tone for effect, and causes a few small but noticeable derailments in Act 3 when he loses his place in the score. Still, you can't deny that his voice is a force of nature. On the podium, Giuseppe Antonicelli takes the mishaps in stride, and elicits alert orchestral results that never smack of routine. A grab bag of Steber excerpts from opera, operetta, and Broadway, culled from live and commercial sources, fills out Disc 2."