The Examiner publishes (scroll halfway down the page) an email from Paul Ziller, the super who the other night in San Francisco played Anna's/Violetta's chauffeur in La Traviata. An excerpt:
Unfortunately Joshua Kosman, the "Chronicle" music critic, wasn't as smitten as this excitable nice young man:
The evening's shocker was the Violetta of soprano Anna Netrebko, a worrisome assemblage of technical problems and stagey mannerisms that came to life only in the opera's short final act.
...
In their place was a dark-hued, sluggish sound, deployed with laborious uncertainty and awkward breath control (I can't recall the last time I was so keenly aware of an opera singer's breathing - and no, it wasn't just the TB speaking). The glittery roulades of "Sempre libera" in Act 1, as Violetta decides to embrace the pleasures of the demimonde for good, sounded crude and approximate.
Then her singing -- not her acting -- apparently got better.
On the other hand, the dude from the San Jose Mercury News heard some "liquid amber" so a good night was had by almost all.