Since she’s best known as a coloratura, her virtuoso singing of the glittering Act 1 aria “Sempre libera,” complete with a skyrocket of a high E-flat, came as no surprise. Damrau focused like a laser on the character’s desperation, raging against impending death….

Most sopranos play the title role - a dying courtesan who finds and loses true love - with gentle pathos. Though “La Traviata” means “the lost one,” Thursday’s Met performance of the Verdi tearjerker featured a major find: Diana Damrau, who, in her first outing as Violetta, mesmerized with her gleaming soprano and ferocious acting….

Damrau, though, this Violetta was a daring victory.Īnthony Tommasini, The New York Times – March 18, 2013 Her ethereal, wounded “Dite alla giovane” took on a fresh poignancy: the first real defeat of a young woman used to winning. Damrau settled in, and her voice both broadened and focused, encompassing both filaments of sound and full-voiced cries in a haunting “Addio del passato.” By her final outpouring, “Gran Dio, morir sì giovine,” she was in a furious groove,…. in the increasingly intense second and third acts.

And she deserved her joyful victory dance at the end of her curtain call. And that race is the marathon when the role is a touchstone like Violetta in Verdi’s “Traviata,”… To go with the Met and its stark Willy Decker production instead is just about the bravest choice Ms. A singer trying out a role for the first time anywhere at the barnlike, high-exposure Metropolitan Opera is like a runner taking a chance on a new distance at the Olympics.

Met opera schedule traviata