Among the heartless party guests, Kyle Pfortmiller distinguished himself as the Marchese d'Obigny, with a distinctive, richly-colored sound. Luigi Roni's Grenvil had forceful presence, and nuanced the tone of his silent interactions with Dessay well; it caused a shiver when he finally sang. Maria Zifchak was a vocally solid and sympathetic Annina. Dmitri Hvorostovsky did not seem to be at his effortless-sounding best but still sang a charismatic, vocally rich and dramatically nuanced Germont père. His interpretation offered chilling insights. A question begged by the libretto is, if Papa Germont knows how great the sacrifice he asks of Violetta is, if his opinion of her is transformed, what keeps him from reconsidering? Hvorostovsky answers this question: he really doesn't believe her. All Violetta's utterances are interpreted through what he "knows" about her already. He laughs at her--laughs!--when she says she's dying; for him, speaking of her sacrifice is a charade of good manners, helping her maintain a polite fiction of virtue. It is only at the very end--"Addio"--that his confidence is shaken, as he turns for an instant to regard her, his hat already in his hand. His scene with Alfredo I found very moving. Hvorostovsky's pause at the threshold, contemplating the stripped furniture, raised the possibility that he had come back to stop Violetta; at the least, he's surprised to find her already gone. "Di Provenza il mar il suol" was luxuriant, with the radiant sun of Alfredo's native soil in his father's voice. Not without reason, Germont is convinced that his plea to his son cannot fail. This aristocratic assurance was equally apparent in the finale of Act II, and aptly shaken in Act III, although the dignity of his bearing and authority of his sound were undimmed.
restores to the opera what Verdi wanted it to have: shock value. Dress rehearsal pictures 
