What binds these Traviatas, made almost 50 years apart, is how neatly one is what the other is not. Natalie Dessay, star of the 2011 DVD from Aix-en-Provence, has extolled the virtues of Joan Sutherland’s power and agility that could well serve as a capsule review of this reissued 1962 Sutherland recording. And though Dessay wasn’t built to have Sutherland’s amplitude, the theatrical realism she brings to the role of Violetta was quite beyond Sutherland. Both are satisfying renderings of the opera but fall short of encompassing its totality. But La traviata accommodates many different routes into the heartbreaking world of the dying courtesan Violetta that don’t leave you missing any of the others.

For opera-goers of a certain age, Sutherland’s first recording was a starter Traviata. The Sutherland name-brand landed the original LPs in public libraries, where I, for one, discovered much of the opera repertoire. And though I somehow knew this wasn’t going to be a Traviata I wanted to live with, the recording has an Urtext quality that shows you exactly what Verdi wrote. Well, almost exactly. The singers take optional high notes; it’s Italian opera after all. But in all other respects, Sutherland’s Violetta is certainly among the most musically accurate on disc. One doesn’t realise how wayward the pitch can be in some of the wider vocal leaps in her Act 1 soliloquy until you hear them sung spot-on. Or close to it. Sutherland isn’t flawless (I’ve heard an even more accurate live performance from Eva Mei). But the beauty of this recording is that its Urtext attitude doesn’t translate into sterility.

By modern theatrical standards, Sutherland seems to outsource the emotional expression of her role to bel canto singing style. Simply follow the tradition and pathos takes care of itself. One hears a handful of phrasing techniques (distinctively rounded phrases or descending portamentos) employed to varying degrees to suit the emotional temperature of any given moment, almost like the prescribed physical gestures that were widely used in the 19th century. And these devices do their job without seeming mannered amid the brimming good health and endless colour of the Sutherland voice, then in the early years of a great career.

Ever-tasteful Carlo Bergonzi seems a bit underpowered next to her; Robert Merrill was only starting to acquire the theatrical fluency of his later years. Yet Sir John Pritchard’s attentive conducting – he even gives inner soliloquies a distinctive pulse that tells you such thoughts aren’t heard out loud – in a recording acoustic with much bloom make this recording preferable to Sutherland’s slicker but more vocally laboured 1981 set with Luciano Pavarotti.

Though Dessay’s Violetta may prove to be a late-career effort (one not as vocally wayward as some recent efforts), she’s more viable than the later Sutherland performance because she uses her vocal resources with such specificity of theatrical purpose. Dessay is in her glory in her Act 2 confrontation with the elder Germont. One phrase after another is crystallised with meaning by her voice and seconded by her inward theatrical fire that tells you she’s living the role like nobody since now-retired Teresa Stratas. Elsewhere, she’s ceaselessly interesting, from the nasty edge she brings to the character in Act 1 to her final death scene, when she exultantly walks towards her death. Her slight stature is used beautifully to convey the character’s end-of-life fragility.

Charles Castronovo is probably the handsomest Alfredo on DVD though his singing, always fine, never reaches the realm of his great predecessors in the role. As Germont, Ludovic Tézier is a curiosity: he sings well and with feeling but is resolutely stony-faced and looks young enough to be Alfredo’s brother.

Pardon me for treating the London Symphony Orchestra under Louis Langrée as a bit of an afterthought but that’s bound to happen amid the theatrical distraction of Jean-François Sivadier’s production. The setting is sort of a backstage netherworld of a theatre or club – Violetta’s world was about about superficial self-presentation, to be sure – that often includes the clean-up crew working in the background while any number of singers are attempting to command the stage. Dress is dissolute modern with lots of hipster hats. The intentional artificiality extends to the country setting of Act 2, with painted panels of clouds and fields. None of this seriously undercuts the opera. But running the acts together does. This is one opera where what happens between the acts is dramatic as what unfolds onstage – an element that’s lost when the opera becomes a continuous whole. Where Sivadier truly serves the opera is in the nuanced character interaction. Time and again, he gets to the heart of a scene, almost despite his own production.