This recording of La Traviata was made at the beginning of Callas’ career. Although the great soprano was not yet at the peak of her vocal and dramatic powers, the characteristic passion, immediacy and empathy in her portrayal of Violetta are ever present. Franco Zeffirelli, who attended the 1951 Florence performance, her first, recalled ‘how the audience went mad … it was sensational, vocally and musically’. Tito Gobbi wrote of a performance later that same year in São Paulo, Brazil: ‘I cannot believe anyone ever sang that first act as Callas sang it … I find it impossible to describe the electrifying brilliance of the coloratura, the beauty, the sheer magic of that sound which she poured out then. And with it perfect diction, colour, inflection and feeling’.