Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Met orchestra managed to make one of opera's most familiar scores sound fresh and exciting.

Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin breathed new life into the familiar score, with gossamer string playing suggesting Violetta’s fragility. His fleet tempos grippingly communicated the opera’s theme of “time running out”(...)

(...)Yannick Nézet-Séguin assuring equally inspired and inspiring leadership on the podium(...)

The orchestra also rose to these grand gestures (...)moments like the lead-up to Violetta’s great “Amami, Alfredo” outburst gave a taste of the delirious lushness and dramatic pullbacks of speed (Yannick Nézet-Séguin) seemed to be aiming for throughout.

(Nézet-Séguin) held back the orchestra determinedly during big vocal set pieces, allowing the singers to do their best, leaving only the preludes to Acts I and III for him to shine. Which he did, with beautifully molded phrases one associates with Arturo Toscanini recordings.