At the 2014 festival, Glyndebourne’s British-made and -conducted Traviata was generally damned with faint praise for Tom Cairns’s staging, if not for the music-making. But the transfer to the small screen enhances some subtleties (especially of the stronger first half) and lets Venera Gimadieva’s Violetta feel like a Gheorgiu-like success of a star on the cusp. The Russian soprano has, and shows skilfully, a grasp of the situations in which the character finds herself that is not only telegraphically clear but most un-prima donna-ish. She is backed up at every stage by Sir Mark Elder’s fresh beating, pacing and balancing of the score – a result that suggests his recent years of work with bel canto repertoire and early-instrument ensembles have taken his Verdi a further stage even beyond his achievements for ENO.

The reservations about this stage production moaned about its not going far enough towards a clear-cut concept. But this apparently halfway house can have advantages. Playing in contemporary clothes in two party scenes provides opportunities for fancy- and formal dress that could be 19th- as much as 21st-century. The settings – often very dark but cunningly lit by Peter Mumford – suggest in their design a kind of compulsory permanent social arena for Violetta to perform and die in. However, the filming preserved on this DVD fails to show us enough impact upstage in Act 3 of the Carnival effect and Violetta’s walk to death.

Gimadieva (whose coloratura is as consistently immaculate as the rest of her performance) is well supported by her fluently voiced if slightly stiff American Alfredo and the smaller roles (especially Molendowska’s there-all-the-time Annina). Tassis Christoyannis’s gently voiced Germont père is insufficiently threatening in his first confrontation with Violetta and too quickly sympathetic thereafter.

The Paris Opéra meanwhile hosts an efficient if idea-light star vehicle with the wide Bastille proscenium bizarrely used. Home viewers at least can centre their vision to avoid lopsidedly watching only a half-stage at a time’s worth of Flora’s party or Violetta’s retreat – an effect which achieves nothing apart from reducing scene-change time. A copy of the picture, and politically incorrect ‘black’ make-up for Oncioiu’s Annina, will us to equate Violetta with Manet’s Olympia, perhaps another ‘traviata’.

At the centre of this Diana Damrau acts out her impression of a stage Violetta rather than ever becoming Violetta. Just once – Alfredo’s arrival at her Act 3 death bed – she does something spontaneous and surprising, and we believe in her love and suffering for the briefest of moments. Otherwise too much is studied and delivered as if by remote control, albeit supported by some technically accomplished singing.

The music-making around her has class. Francesco Demuro’s Alfredo shows attractive colours and a fluent and well-used top, and he can rage (Act 2) and suffer without affectation. Ludovic Tézier has class, plays a good age and captures the contrasting emotions of his three scenes most clearly. Francesco Ivan Ciampa knows how the score goes very well but occasionally (‘Gran Dio…’) seems subject to diva tempo control.

The Glyndebourne set is worth attention for soprano and conductor and for those seeking a pure (and not unmoving) narrative line through the work. The Paris performance and its strong musical context doubtless may satisfy Damrau fans. Willy Decker (Salzburg 2005, DG) and Peter Konwitschny (Graz 2011, ArtHaus Musik) provide more gritty, interpreted readings for repeatable home viewing.