Callas had come and gone, leaving the field to her great rival, Renata Tebaldi. As Mimi in Boheme, Tebaldi had already caused an emotional demonstration by partisans who tied up Manhattan traffic around the Met long after midnight. Last week in a brand-new production of Verdi's La Traviata, the Met's first in 21 years, Tebaldi's performance was memorable.
Visually, no part of the production was entirely satisfactory. In his first opera sets Designer Oliver (My Fair Lady) Smith seemed to be desperately attempting to fill the vast, open spaces of the Met's stage...
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