Amid a welter of publicity and sold-out performances, Salzburg launched its new Traviata in the summer in a controversially modern staging by Willy Decker. Tenor Rolando Villazón was joined by the new star soprano on the block in what promised to be – and was – a runaway success.

The recording of the occasion has to be assessed in a less frenetic state of mind, given the formidable catalogue of sets with famed sopranos to choose from. Nobody is going to gainsay the fact that Netrebko has a glorious voice, even through a large range, flexible enough for the Act 1 pyrotechnics and warm enough for the tragic happenings thereafter. She also appears to have been extraordinarily effective in the large spaces of the Grosses Festpielhaus, not everyone’s favourite place to sing. Indeed, it may be the venue itself that leads her too often to sing out tutta forza with scant regard, at least in the first two acts, for the infinite subtleties and gradations of tone the role of Violetta requires.

More seriously, for the most part she wants the essential tear-in-the-voice that all the greatest interpreters of the role on disc, from Callas to Gheorghiu, have owned. Admiring much of what she was doing in a generalised way, I was none the less left unmoved. In the last act, she evinces much more sympathy as the dying heroine. ‘Addio de passato’ has the right pathos, though in vocal terms she breaks every line with an unwanted breath, and the desperation of Violetta’s final moments are really felt. In a perfect world, she would listen to what others have made of the text and how they have knitted it to the musical line. Perhaps such niceties of interpretation will matter less to others with shorter memories, who will simply enjoy such a youthfully easy performance.

She, Villazón and even Hampson, both men at Flora’s party, are guilty of employing at key moments a kind of breathy Sprechgesang quite foreign to Verdi. Otherwise Villazón offers an impassioned, wholly credible Alfredo, but one missing the vocal elegance and charm of Alfredo Kraus with Callas (Ghione) and Frank Lopardo with Gheorghiu (Solti). Hampson, as Germont, is musical and expressive in most of what he does but again one questions whether he has the heft for Verdian roles: his father Germont isn’t very authoritative, merely tetchy.

The smaller parts are no more than adequately taken, aside from the veteran Luigi Roni who in a few phrases as Dr Grenvil exhibits the Italianate style that one misses elsewhere. Carlo Rizzi was criticised at the time for his hectic reading and the very forward, rather explosive recording only emphasises a slight vulgarity in his approach, tempered however by some wonderfully accented and warm playing from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

He – or the singers – decided to take a middle way between Solti’s absolutely complete performance and the old practice of making extensive cuts. Violetta has only one verse of her Act 1 aria but two of ‘Addio del passato’. Alfredo gets only one verse of his cabaletta, Germont both of his. We have the full version of ‘Parigi, o cara’ but then the damaging cut in its quasi-cabaletta.

Among modern versions, the new one hardly surpasses Solti live at Covent Garden in 1994 (but that should preferably be bought in its DVD form – Decca, 6/01) with Gheorghiu matching Netrebko in vocal quality and beating her in verbal acuity, or even the underrated Muti, where Fabbricini, with a less inviting voice, is twice the Violetta of Netrebko in terms of understanding instinctively the heroine’s travails. She has the young, ardent Alagna as an excellent Alfredo. In the old tradition, all cut versions, Callas, with superb support from Alfredo Kraus and Mario Sereni, remains a unique experience. Cotrubas under Carlos Kleiber and Victoria de los Angeles with Serafin both sing an infinitely touching and vulnerable Violetta.