Circumstances alter cases, as Barrie's Admirable Crichton is fond of saying: ''the same man might not be master'', or, in the present context, ''the same record might not be Critic's Choice''. This Cetra set was emphatically Philip Hope-Wallace's choice at the time of the first review. It was the most haunting, carried the deepest feeling, was unrivalled for dramatic insight. By 'it' he really meant 'la traviata', the character who to such a large extent is La traviata, and by that he meant Callas. But of course the comparisons at that time were with Renata Tebaldi, Antonietta Stella, Rosanna Carteri and Licia Albanese: none of them likely to match Callas in characterization. We now have a whole array of Violettas, most of whom have learned from Callas, more important, we have two other recordings of Callas herself.
Those are both live recordings—which of itself guarantees nothing in terms of artistic merit (not even with Callas), but, by a combination of circumstances, they provide her Violetta with a better setting. Most notably the conducting is better: Giulini conducts the 1955 Scala performance and Ghione (quite frequently preferable) the 1958 Lisbon. With Santini, here, it is really very difficult to keep patience at all. He is not just slow, but nerveless, the tunes flop like so much flesh without bone, and chords fall like lumps of lead. Then the rest of the cast are hardly up to the assignment—this, after all, was Callas's only studio-made Traviata. The recorded sound also is not good: the orchestra very backward, a not entirely natural reverberance obtruding sometimes, an element of distortion occasionally threatening to make trouble for the speakers. The live performances have their own disadvantages as recordings (the Scala one especially) but on the whole the flaws are more readily excusable, part of the hazards of the business.
Still, there is la Callas. Take a moment or two from this Cetra set: her verse of the Brindisi, so elegant and beautifully shaded, her diminnendo on ''del viver mio'' seeming to promise a great ''Ah, fors' e liu'' (which does not quite materialize), her infinitely dolorous ''sempre, sempre'' and then the full-hearted ''Amami, Alfredo'', above all the dreadful facing of death in the moment of happiness, ''Ma se tornando non m'hai salvato''. These are indeed, as PHW said long ago, ''haunting''. The voice too is a degree fresher than it was five or even two years later. I think, all the same, I would put this a good third in the quest for the Callas-Violetta on record.'