Peter Hall’s 1987 staging for Glyndebourne‚ also directed by him for video‚ was recorded without an audience‚ enabling him to add atmospheric camera effects that would have been difficult in live conditions. He made a virtue of the old‚ small theatre by creating an intimate‚ claustrophobic production that brings home to us the personal tragedy of the drama in John Gunter’s closely observed sets. Between them Hall and McLaughlin bring out the aching intensity of Violetta’s predicament‚ and the soprano nicely distinguishes between the coquette‚ the woman in love and the tragic victim of circumstances. She gives her all to the role‚ her expressive eyes always telling us of her changing emotions. Although some high­flying passages stretch her to the utmost‚ we are consoled by the truthfulness of the rest in her evenly phrased‚ subtly reflected singing. In his body language‚ Ellis is the very epitome of a complacent‚ interfering bourgeois father. He sings warmly with keen observance of Verdi’s many markings‚ most notably in a piano account of the second verse of ‘Di Provenza’. He also makes something of a dull cabaletta‚ both verses‚ which is usually excluded. MacNeil suggests a spoilt‚ slightly callous youth‚ hardly able to cope with the new feelings Violetta awakes in him. He sings with the even emission one would expect in the son of Cornell MacNeil‚ a famed Verdi baritone. Haitink conducts unobtrusively in deliberate but not dragging speeds and obtains excellent playing from the LPO of the day. The Decca/Covent Garden version of 1994 (9/95) is the more glamorous and probably better­sung version‚ Gheorghiu’s rounded portrayal of Violetta as apt‚ in its more confident way‚ as McLaughlin’s. Solti conducts an even fuller text underpinning Eyre’s conventional but affecting production. I hope that the 1993 La Scala staging‚ conducted by Muti in Liliana Cavani’s glorious production‚ my favourite on video (Sony‚ 10/93)‚ will soon make it onto DVD.