Encore Une Fois

Attempting to repeat an earlier triumph is an exercise fraught with peril. Operatic history is littered with questionable comebacks, from Callas to Villazon, and just last year Anna Netrebko pulled out of the Met's La Traviata for fear of comparison with her younger self. A reprisal of Willy Decker's Salzburg production which launched her international fame, Netrebko wisely decided to leave the task to other hands, declaring "I simply don't believe I'll manage it just as well in exactly the same show as five years ago". Despite being at the height of her fame, the soprano clearly felt it was better to try a new challenge than face assessment against a previous interpretation. One of the other great successes of the past decade has now taken up the mantle, and done so with the formula virtually unaltered. Laurent Pelly's take on La Fille…