
Moving on through Warner's Callas Live box set.
I didn't really know this performance that well, having previously only listened to excerpts in pretty atrocious sound. The sound here is massively improved (though it can't blot out the contribution of the prompter), but I'm still not sure why Warner decided to include it in the Callas Live box, especially considering that the studio version of the opera is considered one of the classics of the gramophone. If including this, then why not the superb live
Un Ballo in Maschera from La Scala in 1957, which is a far better performance and far better recorded?
The only other singer of note is Di Stefano, and, without the firm hand of Serafin at the helm, he tends to be careless of note values and rhythm. Campolonghi's Rigoletto makes hardly any impression at all. The conductor, Umberto Mugnai, makes even more cuts than those traditional at the time and stage and pit are often out of sync; nor does he have any real idea of shaping the music and his tempi are all over the place.
Callas
is a miracle. She could almost be a different singer from the one we have heard so far in this set, her voice wondrously lightened to dispel any associations with Abigaille, Kundry, Elena, Aida and Armida, the roles we have heard thus far. I dislike, as did she in later years, the decision to end
Caro nome on a high E (actually an Eb as she transposed the aria down) rather than the rapturous trill on the lower E that Verdi wrote. It obtrudes on the air of gentle reverie that she has created in the aria itself. Apparently Callas did it to appease the Mexican audience's love of high notes, but she massively regretted it later.
It is also remarkable that when stage and pit fall apart, it is usually Callas (who was so blind she couldn't see the conductor) who brings things back on track.
It's interesting to have this snapshot of Callas trying out a role she wouldn't sing again except in the studio, and it is a great shame that she didn't keep it in her repertoire. Had she done so, we might have re-thought the role of Gilda, much as we did that of Lucia. That said, it is still to the studio set that I will turn if I want to hear Callas's Gilda.