I don't like that Traviata at all.  Edita Gruberova's entirely unconvincing, and my mum thinks Neil Shicoff looks like Eric Idle in it

A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh, though...?

As I mentioned about a month ago, I saw a stupendous Violetta at St Petersburg opera recently, named Anna Nechaeva.... definitely one to watch for in the future!   It's a hugely difficult role, of course...  you have to be a coloratura soprano in Act One, then a lyric for the confrontation with Germont, and by the end you have to have the big guns of a dramatic soprano...  and it's all just one performer!

And why the picture of Ronnie Corbett on the DVD cover, lovely man that he is?

Well, despite the fact that I could quite happily live the rest of my life without ever seeing the ROH production again, next season is one of those revivals where I am simply going to have to book for both casts!  Besides the A cast (Netrebko, Kaufmann, Hvorostovsky) the second cast is led by Norah Amsellem who, though not the most technically perfect Violetta, is possibly the most convincing I have ever come across, and certainly the only one who's ever really done anything for me in THAT production (she shared the role in the last revival but one).  Her fioritura in Act 1 is all the better for being slightly insecure and acidic; it seemed reckless and "on the edge".  She has the most amazing ability to spin a pianissimo.  I completely believed in her, and it didn't hurt that she was the spitting image of the description of Marguerite Gautier in "La dame aux camellias".

I was also quite impressed recently by Kate Ladner at Opera Holland Park.