Metropolitan Opera Archives

Verdi's "La Traviata" was given its fifth and final performance of the season at the Metropolitan Opera House Friday night. Eleanor Steber was heard for the first time in the role of Violetta and the otherwise familiar cast included Charles Kullman as Alfredo; Richard Bonelli as Germont, and the Misses Votipka and Paulee and Messrs. De Paolis, Cehanovsky, D'Angelo and Alvary in the less weighty parts. Mr. Sodero conducted.

Miss Steber's portrayal of Violetta was vocally most acceptable in the frivolous episodes of the first act. Her delivery of the florid passages of "Sempre libera" was accurate and pure in intonation, although her sustained top tones were a trifle breathy in quality.

But the more dramatic pages of Violetta's music found the young soprano beyond her emotional depths. The duet with the elder Germont in the second act was, in part, tonally agreeable but quite wanting in depth of feeling: and in her subsequent parting with Alfredo, one of the most moving scenes in all Verdi, she was unable to impart the accents of impassioned despair to her singing.

Histrionically regarded, Miss Steber's delineation is as yet stilted and artificial in its approach, never penetrating beneath the surface of the role.

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