Callas with Wagner

[wagnernn]

oh,I want to create new topic about....
Do you think Callas is a great Wagnerian soprano? I have listen to Parsifal with Callas,and like Nilsson, I think she should be a dramatic coloratura soprano!!!

[Que]

oh,I want to create new topic about....
Do you think Callas is a great Wagnerian soprano? I have listen to Parsifal with Callas,and like Nilsson, I think she should be a dramatic coloratura soprano!!!

But Callas actually is (or rather was) a dramatic coloraturo soprano!

Q

[wagnernn]

i'm sorry,my english is too bad!!!!
I want to say that it is better for Callas to be a Dramatic coloratura soprano,but...

[zamyrabyrd]

I have the LP of Callas in Parsifal, though not sure if this opera translates well into Italian.

Callas was not Nilsson, or Jessye Norman or that type of dramatic soprano. Of course she did dramatic roles and maybe pushing it too much is what destroyed her essentially lyric voice. She also made a recording 'Lyric-Coloratura" but could not sustain the high E in the Bell Song. Therefore, as with most other lyric sopranos, there is the possibility to venture out into higher or heavier stuff, but these do not define the voice type. She even sang Carmen but it didn't make her a mezzo.

By the wayside, yesterday Sept. 16th was the 30th anniversary of her passing. On Mezzo TV (Fr.) there was a memorial of sorts, a film made in 2003, which shockingly passed off as fact that she had a child by Onassis in March 1960 who died soon after birth! But there ARE photographs of her in February, 1960 that show her as svelte as ever. Also Zeffirelli comes out with some other sensationalist trash about her alleged lack of relations with Meneghini.

Gosh, had she lived, she would have been 83 yesterday...

ZB

[Que]

i'm sorry,my english is too bad!!!!
I want to say that it is better for Callas to be a Dramatic coloratura soprano,but...

Ah, I see  - no problem. Well, then the answer is yes - Callas's voice was not suited for Wagner.
It's sometimes interesting to see that singers try repertoire that doesn't suit them.

For instance, and maybe a controversial statement, I never understood why Jussi Björling wanted to sing the Italian repertoire so badly. He sounds quite out of place in it and would IMO have been much better of in the Germanic repertoire, perhaps even Wagner - he had the stamina for it.

Q

[Tsaraslondon]

Ah, I see  - no problem. Well, then the answer is yes - Callas's voice was not suited for Wagner.
It's sometimes interesting to see that singers try repertoire that doesn't suit them.

Fot instance, and maybe a controversial statement, I never understood why Jussi Björling wanted to sing the Italian repertoire so badly. He sounds quite out of place in it and would IMO have been much better of in the Germanic repertoire, perhaps even Wagner - he had the stamina for it.

Q

The answer vis-a-vis Callas and Wagner is not so simple. When she arrived in Italy in 1947, she was considered a dramatic soprano, and it was in roles like Aida, Turandot, Gioconda and Tosca that she made her name. It would not be uncommon at that time for such a soprano to be asked to sing Wagner (in Italian), and she sang quite a few Isoldes and Brunnhildes, as well as Kundry. (Tebaldi, too sang quite a few Wagner roles in Italian too, though hers were Elsa and Elisabeth.) Given that Callas is singing in Italian, which rather changes the tinta of the score, I actually find her Kundry very fine, and much more beautifully sung than it often is. One also has to remember that the bel canto repertoire, in which she later excelled, was, at that time, the province of lighter soubrette type voices. The first bel canto role she added to her repertoire was Norma, though, by then, if done at all, Norma was considered a dramatic soprano role, with singers like Gina Cigna more or less ignoring the coloratura demands of the role. What really caused a sensation and totally changed the direction in which her career would go, was the occasion when Serafin got her to deputise for the light soprano Margareta Carosio in Bellini's I Puritani, in between performances she was giving as Brunnhilde in Die Walkure. This was a feat unheard of since the days of such singers as Lilli Lehmann, and suddenly the world was talking about Maria Callas. Indeed her first recordings (made for the Italian firm of Cetra) were made to illustrate her versatility. She recorded the Liebestod (in Italian) from Tristan und Isolde, Casta Diva, from Norma and the Mad Scene from I Puritani. Incidentally, after the radio broadcast of Parsifal in 1950, she never sang a Wagner role again, though she did once programme the Liebestod in a concert in Athens in 1958. Instead she spearheaded the bel canto revival, opening the door on a neglected repertoire, which was gratefully seized on by such sopranos as Sutherland, Caballe, Sills, Scotto and Leyla Gencer.

I find myself in sharp disagreement with your comment on Bjoerling. Thank God he did steer clear of Wagner, which would probably have bruised his beautiful silvery, essentially lyric tenor. On the contrary, I would say he was eminently suited to the repertoire he chose. Just listening to his 1944 recording of Nessun dorma now. What poetry there is in his singing. None better (and I include Pavarotti).

[val]

Que

Ah, I see  - no problem. Well, then the answer is yes - Callas's voice was not suited for Wagner.
It's sometimes interesting to see that singers try repertoire that doesn't suit them.

I agree with that. Her Kundry has not the style nor the specific kind of voice, if we remember Mödl (perhaps the best Kundry) or Flagstad.

Fot instance, and maybe a controversial statement, I never understood why Jussi Björling wanted to sing the Italian repertoire so badly. He sounds quite out of place in it and would IMO have been much better of in the Germanic repertoire, perhaps even Wagner - he had the stamina for it.

I also agree. Bjorling had the perfect voice for Lohengrin. Perhaps the best since Franz Völker. But he didn't record Lohengrin (or the Meistersinger, I am sure he would be a superb Stolzing).
Instead he insisted on some roles that were not very accorded to his personality: Turiddu his a good example. But he gave two splendid interpretations in the italian repertoire: Radames and Manrico.

I wish he had recorded more Lieder, in special Schubert, and more german opera repertoire: Max in the Freischütz, Tamino in the Magic Flute, Lohengrin and Stolzing and even Appolon in Daphne. 

[Tsaraslondon]

I agree with that. Her Kundry has not the style nor the specific kind of voice, if we remember Mödl (perhaps the best Kundry) or Flagstad.

Well, according to Kenneth Furie in The Metroplitan Guide to Recorded Opera, Modl's Kundry is vocally unsympathetic, and we do need to feel sympathy for Kundry. In many performances, it is all too easy to forget that Kundry is a seductress in Act 2. It's a very difficult role to get right and Callas, though singing in Italian, comes as close as any. Certainly in 1950 the role holds no problems for her at all, and she is actually able to sing it rather than bark it as so many do.

[knight66]

I have heard mention of the Callas/Christoff Parsifal many times, but I have never read a critical evaluation of the overall performance and the recorded sound. Callas apart, is it worth getting hold of?

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

I have heard mention of the Callas/Christoff Parsifal many times, but I have never read a critical evaluation of the overall performance and the recorded sound. Callas apart, is it worth getting hold of?

Mike

Well the sound is lo-fi, but reasonable for a radio broadcast of the day. The opera is heavily cut, which is something of a blessing when it come to the decidedly second rate Africo Baldelli as Parsifal, but is worth hearing for the contributions of Christoff, Callas, Panerai and Gui. There is no doubt the opera sounds different in Italian, not quite right. But then, really it is no more odd than it being performed in English in English speaking countries, as it would be at the ENO, for instance.

[knight66]

Thanks, I simply cannot imagine it. The orchestra is such a protagonist in this opera that it really needs a reasonable sound picture.

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

Thanks, I simply cannot imagine it. The orchestra is such a protagonist in this opera that it really needs a reasonable sound picture.

Mike

Well, for that reason it certainly wouldn't come high on a list of recommendable versions, but the contributions of Callas, Christoff, and Gui means that it is certainly not without interest.

[calbo]

I never listened Cllas in an opéra of Wagner, but I don't think that it's the best repertoire for her voice. She was really better in Verdi's or Bellini's opéras as La Traviata or Norma for example

[Tsaraslondon]

I never listened Cllas in an opéra of Wagner, but I don't think that it's the best repertoire for her voice. She was really better in Verdi's or Bellini's opéras as La Traviata or Norma for example

I would agree, though, as I have been at pains to point out, though not her natural fach, it is very interesting to hear what she does with a Wagnerian role like Kundry. When she recorded it, in 1950, she certainly had no difficulty with the notes or with riding the orchestra. What is more remarkable is how her legato singing remains in tact, making her Kundry a very feminine and womanly seductress. It is interesting to note that, in one of her master classes on Abscheulicher! from Fidelio, when she demonstrates a phrase, the only time I have heard her sing in German, the language still does not impede her wonderful legato line.