I don't know if I received a defective version of the Blu-ray, but I retruned it to Amazon for a full refund. Blu-ray supposedly has uncompressed audio, which should make it sound even better than a CD. The disc that I received was almost unlistenable in its poor audio quality. The sound seemed like it was recorded using a cell phone microphone, tinny and variable in terms of pickup. This is my absolute favorite opera, and was the first opera that I purcased on Blu ray. I would have put up with a lot just to be able to watch it in HD. Unfortunately, even the video quality was not great. It had a soap opera-like video quality rather than film-like quality.I was too distracted by the presentation quality to even notice the performer's talent, so I will abstain from commenting on it.