Maria Callas

[Tsaraslondon]

I still prefer Callas' "Habanera"  (1962)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fZRssq7UlM&feature=related

She doesn't have to jump barefoot all around the stage to get an effect. Baltsa sounds great when you don't look at her.  Berganza is a little too tame.  Callas has irony in her facial expression as well as voice.  Love is all a game for her Carmen.

ZB

On balance I too prefer Callas. As usual, most of Callas's acting is in the voice and the eyes. She is very economical as to gesture, but then, she is singing in concert, which, in itself, is a different discipline form performing in costume and in a complete production. And of course, she never sang the role on stage.. Baltsa's performance worked much better when seen from the auditorium, where  distance lends enchantment. Close ups don't do her any favours - possibly something to do with the way she furrows her brow.

[Wendell_E]

Sorry, I did of course mean Act II.

Well, for Scarpia, that's the last act.   

[knight66]

Just popped in to say that although I thought Berganza was good, Callas was a great deal more engaging. I have problems with this aria, as it usually sound like an endlessly repeated tapeloop. Some singers are better than others in varying the verses. But Callas managed to draw me in and it did not feel a moment too long.

Berganza forgotten. How many recital discs are there out there of her? Next to none if not actually none. She was not one to cultivate the limelight and no management company packaged her.

She was good, thoroughly musical and totally professional; but not to my ears exciting. But in her time, she was very highly regarded indeed. I know some of her sets with the likes of Abbado and Maazel etc are current; but not due to her presence.

Mike

[kishnevi]

On the subject of Callas' career as a dramatic soprano, here is a precis included in the liner notes to EMI's most recent re-release of Turandot [Callas/Schwarzkopf/Fernandi/La Scala--Serafin] in their newest budget opera format ["EMI Classics The Home of Opera"--I suppose this means that when Opera goes on vacation, She stays at Universal]
excerpted as fair use:
Maria Callas sings Turandot

When Maria Callas arrived in Verona in August 1947 from New York, she had high hopes of becoming a
major star of the operatic stage. Although born in New York in 1923, she and her sister Jackie had been taken to Athens in 1937 by their Greek mother to get the musical education that was beyond the family's financial means in America. In Athens, Maria received a solid and comprehensive training in the art of singing, first from Maria Trivella and then from the Spanish coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo. It was Hidalgo who taught Maria the technique of bel canto singing in the florid music of Rossini, Donizetti and
Bellini, even though the young girl's voice was large and seemed more suited to the dramatic soprano repertoire. Maria's first student appearance in an opera was Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana in 1939, and her first major professional part after she joined the Lyric Theatre Company in Athens during the war was Tosca in 1942. Outstanding among the other roles that she sang in those days was Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio, so it seemed that she was after all destined to be a dramatic soprano.

Her engagement at the Arena di Verona was to perform the title part in La Gioconda, conducted by Tullio Serafin. It was the first time she had sung since leaving Greece in 1945 and returning to New York, where all her efforts to find work had proved fruitless until she was engaged to sing the lead in Turandot in January 1947 for a new company in Chicago. But the company went bankrupt a few days before its scheduled opening, and Callas was again unemployed until the offer came to sing in La Gioconda in Verona. The performances went well enough, but the expected offers of work failed to materialise.
However, there was help at hand in the person of Giovanni Battista Meneghini, a wealthy Italian industrialist and opera lover whom Callas had met when she first arrived in Verona and who was keen to further her career. An early audition at La Scala was unsuccessful, but Meneghini did manage to secure an engagement to sing Isolde (in Italian, as was customary in Italy at that time) in December at La Fenice, Venice, under Maestro Serafin.

In the early part of 1948 Meneghini continued to promote Callas around the Italian opera houses, but only in the heaviest dramatic parts, including Turandot in January and February in Venice, and then in March at Udine. In April she secured some performances of La forza del destino in Trieste; there followed Tristan und Isolde in Genoa in May and then Turandot in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in July and again in Verona. September and October brought several performances of Aida in Turin and Rovigo, but by that time Callas was becoming disheartened at being typecast in such heavy dramatic parts and was seriously thinking of returning to the USA. It was then that she met Francesco Siciliani, who was just beginning his tenure as music director at the Teatro Comunale in Florence. A perceptive and cultivated musician, Siciliani had just moved to Florence after being artistic director at the San Carlo Opera House in Naples.  The meeting was to have momentous consequences both for Callas and for Siciliani, who immediately spotted the singer's potential and invited her at short notice to open his new season as Norma, the role that she was to find most congenial as well as challenging (and would eventually sing more than any other).

Following two performances of Norma in Florence on 30 November and 5 December 1948, Callas's next engagement was as Brünnhilde in Die Walküre under Serafin in Venice. While the performances were taking place, there was a crisis at the opera house: the soprano Margherita Carosio, who was scheduled to sing the coloratura role of Elvira in I puritani, became ill and no replacement could be found. Serafin asked Callas to undertake the part and, despite her misgivings about learning it at such notice, she trusted Serafin and accepted the challenge. The musical and dramatic effect of Callas's performance in Bellini's bel canto opera amazed the operatic world and instantly made her an international star. It was the turning point in her career and led the way to her later successes in the bel canto operas of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini and in other neglected works.

After the success if I puritani, Callas's career took off, but although her ability to perform bel canto operas in a theatrically exciting way pointed to a new direction for her stage repertoire, she still had a number of engagements to fulfil as a dramatic soprano, including more Wagner, with Die Walküre in Palermo immediately after the Venice Puritani, and taking on Kundry in Parsifal in Rome for the first time in February and March 1949. She sang her final performances of Tristan und Isolde in Rome in February 1950, and revisited Parsifal for a RAI radio performance in Rome on 20 and 21 November 1950. As to Turandot, Callas was glad to be able to leave behind this extremely taxing part with four performances in Naples in February 1949 and then four more in May and June at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

One of the rewards of Callas's new stardom was that she attracted the interest of the Italian record company Fonit Cetra, and in November 1949 she was invited to make three double-sided 78-rpm records in Turin with the local RAI Orchestra conducted by Arturo Basile. The items chosen reflected Callas's recent successes in the opera house, starting with 'Dolce e calmo', the Italian version of the Liebestod ('Mild und leise') from Tristan und Isolde; then came Norma's introductory aria 'Casta Diva' (but without chorus) and its demanding cabaletta, 'Ah bello a me ritorna', and most of the Mad Scene from I puritani.

[There follows a discussion of Callas' recording career with EMI, including an unhappy (from Callas' viewpoint) digression into Cetra early on.  I pick up when the liner notes return to Turandot ]

By the end of 1956 Callas had set down definitive recordings for EMI of some 14 well-known operas, including several that she never sang on the stage (such as La bohème and Pagliacci). For 1957, it was decided to record Il barbiere di Siviglia in London and then to make three more in Italy. The Rossini would be Callas's first complete opera in stereo, though unfortunately the new technology was not yet available in Italy. The first of the Italian trio was La sonnambula, recorded in March 1957 during a revival at La Scala of the Visconti production, which had been such a success in 1955. Then for July, Legge selected two contrasting Puccini operas: Manon Lescaut, which Callas never performed on stage, and her old warhorse Turandot. For the supporting cast of Turandot, Legge chose his wife, the distinguished German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, to sing Liù, and for Calaf he engaged the Italian tenor Eugenio Fernandi, then at the start of an impressive but short-lived career during which he appeared at the Metropolitan in New York, the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival. It had been some eight years since Callas had last sung Turandot in the theatre, but she had no problem in the studio in recreating the icy Chinese princess for the microphone. In fact, it was the role of Manon Lescaut that presented more vocal problems for her, and the recording was held back for several years before being released, whereas the Turandot came out in the usual way and was greeted with enthusiasm by the critics and the public. The role of Turandot was one for which Callas first became known at the beginning of her career, when she gave some 24 performances in two years, and the recording is a fitting tribute to what remains one of her most powerful assumptions.

© TONY LOCANTRO, 2008

Beyond the Cetra 78 mentioned in the liner notes, are there any recordings of her singing any Wagner?  Was the Parsifal broadcast ever released in some public form, or is it still sitting (hopefully) in the RAI vaults?

[knight66]

There is a Parsifal which has Boris Christoff in the cast. It is live, in Italian, with so-so sound. I have never heard it. Apart from that and the end of Tristan, I don't think there is any other Wagner preserved.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=callas+parsifal&aq=f



I assume this has to be from the Nov 1950 run of performances in Rome. It constituted her farewell to Wagner.

While looking for that information, I noticed that one of her first engagements, in Athens, was in the opera Tiefland, prior to that Bocaccio. I don't think either of them ever surfaced again.

The Parsifal is available through Amazon Marketplace sellers.

Thanks for slogging through typing all that. I had forgotten how difficult the start of her career had been. Interesting also that Serafin, who became a musical mentor to her, missed her potential first time round.

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

It had been some eight years since Callas had last sung Turandot in the theatre, but she had no problem in the studio in recreating the icy Chinese princess for the microphone. In fact, it was the role of Manon Lescaut that presented more vocal problems for her, and the recording was held back for several years before being released, whereas the Turandot came out in the usual way and was greeted with enthusiasm by the critics and the public. 
[/i]
© TONY LOCANTRO, 2008

I don't suppose the liner notes for the recording would be the place to question Legge's wisdom in recording her in Turandot at that stage in her career. She does manage the demands of the role better than one might have expected in 1957, but the effort must have cost her dear, and is evident when she turns to Manon Lescaut, which followed, and in which, much of the time, she sounds utterly exhausted. The recording was followed by a concert in Athens in August, La Sonnambula in Edinburgh, where she caused a scandal by refusing to sing an extra performance which La Scala scheduled without her consent, and the studio recording of Medea. At none of these is she at her best. However by the time of a concert appearance in Dallas in November, singing arias from La Traviata, Macbeth, Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, I Puritani and Anna Bolena, the rehearsal for which was recorded, she is back on form, and the Un Ballo in Maschera at La Scala, which followed in December, is one of her most recommended live performances. In a role far more conducive to her than either Turandot or Manon Lescaut, she sings with refulgent tone and complete security.

I sometimes wonder if Legge, great recording producer though he was, ever really understood Italian opera. Much of Callas's recorded repertoire has little to do with her stage career. Puccini and verismo, played a very small part in it once she had made her name, and I am not forgetting Tosca, a role she actually sang quite rarely from the time of the famous recording (1953) until those last legendary performances in 1964 and 1965. She had even given up singing Aida long before the recording (1955) was made. She wanted to record Anna Bolena and Il Pirata, but he would only allow her to record a couple of arias. Even Medea, one of her most famous roles was farmed out to Ricordi. Legge would have nothing to do with it. It is unfortunate, for those who only know Callas from her studio recordings are likely to have a slightly skewered picture of her art. Joan Sutherland was fortunate in that Decca, and her husband Richard Bonynge, recognised early on what her metier would be, and recorded her in all her famous roles. Interestingly, after Callas died, EMI tried to repair Legge's omission, by issuing many of her live performances, which had hitherto only been available on pirate labels.

[kishnevi]

There is a Parsifal which has Boris Christoff in the cast. It is live, in Italian, with so-so sound. I have never heard it. Apart from that and the end of Tristan, I don't think there is any other Wagner preserved.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=callas+parsifal&aq=f



I assume this has to be from the Nov 1950 run of performances in Rome. It constituted her farewell to Wagner.

While looking for that information, I noticed that one of her first engagements, in Athens, was in the opera Tiefland, prior to that Bocaccio. I don't think either of them ever surfaced again.

The Parsifal is available through Amazon Marketplace sellers.

Thanks for slogging through typing all that. I had forgotten how difficult the start of her career had been. Interesting also that Serafin, who became a musical mentor to her, missed her potential first time round.

Mike

No need to thank me.  Adobe put a "save as *.txt" function into PDF reader--don't know how long ago that was, but all I needed to do was let Adobe save into a text file and cut and paste from there.  No slogging required.

I have two recordings by that Virtuoso label.  One is the Callas London Tosca that EMI released eventually under their own name, and the other is a Siegfried (in German) conducted by Furtwangler with Svanholm and Flagstad, in a La Scala performance from 1950.  Sound quality is one rung down from abysmal on both--worse on the Siegfried than the Tosca.  Worse than the recordings I have from Opera d'Oro, which is bad enough. If this Parsifal is only so-so sound, that's an improvement over these two turkeys. 

[Guido]

I think I have counted as many as 6 recordings of Medea by Callas - which one do the Callas experts consider the best? I don't know this opera at all (or anything by Cherubini)

Is there a modern recording that people like?

[Tsaraslondon]

I think I have counted as many as 6 recordings of Medea by Callas - which one do the Callas experts consider the best? I don't know this opera at all (or anything by Cherubini)

Is there a modern recording that people like?

As far as I know the original version of the score (in French with spoken dialogue) has never been recorded. I believe the only studio recordings  (apart from Callas) are Gwyneth Jones on Decca and Sylvia Sass on Hungaraton. All three of these use a hybrid version of the score, which uses an Italian transition and recitatives by the German composer Franz Lachner. However neither Jones nor Sass begin to challenge Callas's hegemony in the role. Here is a list of Callas performances that have appeared on disc at one time or another.

May 1953 - Maggio Musicale Fiorentino - Gui 
December 1953 - La Scala - Bernstein
September 1957 - La Scala/studio - Serafin
November 1958 - Dallas - Rescigno 
June 1959 - Covent Garden - Rescigno
December 1961 - La Scala - Schippers

Please also note that each conductor prepared their own version of the score, so they all differ musically in some way. Of these, the Schippers can quickly be discarded. Though there are flashes of the old Callas magic, she no longer has the requisite power and control to do the role full justice. The Covent Garden, with substantially the same cast as Dallas, enjoys better sound but is nowhere near as exciting as Dallas, so I would probably ditch that too. The Gui/Florence performance has a lot to commend it, and is interesting in housing Callas's first thoughts on the role, but the Bernstein is even better so I would probably end up ditching that too. The other 3 are all worth hearing.


The studio recording, not, as it happens, made for EMI (Walter Legge would have nothing to do with the project) but for the Italian firm of Ricordi is actually nowhere near on the same level as Bernstein or Rescigno, but it is in reasonably good stereo sound, and for that reason alone is worth owning. And, in this of all roles, even a slightly off form Callas outshines the efforts of both Jones and Sass in their studio recordings. For many years I was perfectly happy with it, but, then I hadn't heard what she does with the role under Bernstein (at La Scala), and Rescigno (in Dallas).

The Bernstein finds Callas in sovereign voice. As one contemporary commentator put it, she sounds as if she was born singing it. The roles many demands are met full on and dispatched with ease. Vocally it is a tour de force, and, for that reason, demands to be heard. However, by the time of the Dallas performances, Callas had substantially refined her charactersiation. This performance was recorded the night Rudolf Bing cancelled her Met contract, and many said she sounded as if she were hurling all her vitriol at him. Maybe she was... However we don't just get the fire eating, vengeful Medea. We also see the woman consumed with love for the man who bore her children, driven to the terrible acts she commits because of his duplicity. Furthermore, the cast also includes Jon Vickers as Jason and Teresa Berganza as Neris, a truly stellar cast. If I could only have one of her Medeas, this would be it (with a slightly regretful glance at Bernstein).

[sospiro]

Apologies if this has been posted already

Some of it is so sad

http://www.classicaltv.com/v418/opera/maria-callas-living-and-dying-for-art-and-love

[Tsaraslondon]

Apologies if this has been posted already

Some of it is so sad

http://www.classicaltv.com/v418/opera/maria-callas-living-and-dying-for-art-and-love

I saw it when it was shown on the BBC. For the most part it concentrates on her characterisation of the role of Tosca and reactions to it from other professionals, but I deplore the comments of Nicholas Cage, who states as fact much that is unsubstantiated and hearsay. There is no real evidence to suggest that Callas and Onassis had a baby, and many Callas biographers refute that fact. I'm not even sure his comments had any place in this documentary.

[Scarpia]

I'm not even sure his comments had any place in this documentary.

Yes, all he did was research her life and write a book about her.  What use is he?  What was needed was more inarticulate divas and impresarios struggling to string together more platitudes about Callas.  There wasn't enough of that.   

[Tsaraslondon]

Yes, all he did was research her life and write a book about her.  What use is he?  What was needed was more inarticulate divas and impresarios struggling to string together more platitudes about Callas.  There wasn't enough of that.   

Why are you even reading this? You don't like Callas. Correction, you don't even like singers. And it's odd that most of Callas's other biographers, who presumably also researched her life, come to completely different conclusions. I feel the ignore button coming on.

[Scarpia]

Why are you even reading this? You don't like Callas. Correction, you don't even like singers. And it's odd that most of Callas's other biographers, who presumably also researched her life, come to completely different conclusions. I feel the ignore button coming on.

Oh dear.  I guess it was a mistake in invade the sanctity of the Callas shrine thread.  Maybe I can find a nice Helga Dernesch thread.

[Bulldog]

Why are you even reading this? You don't like Callas. Correction, you don't even like singers. And it's odd that most of Callas's other biographers, who presumably also researched her life, come to completely different conclusions. I feel the ignore button coming on.

There's no reason to get hostile.  After all, whether Callas had babies or not has zero to do with her worth as an opera singer.

As for the ignore button, DON'T DO IT!  That's only for wimps.

[Tsaraslondon]

There's no reason to get hostile.  After all, whether Callas had babies or not has zero to do with her worth as an opera singer.

As for the ignore button, DON'T DO IT!  That's only for wimps.

Already done. Maybe that makes me a wimp, but I really can't be bothered with WIMs (wind up merchants).

[Scarpia]

Already done. Maybe that makes me a wimp, but I really can't be bothered with WIMs (wind up merchants).

Now you'll just be wondering what nasty things I might be saying about Callas.

[Guido]

As far as I know the original version of the score (in French with spoken dialogue) has never been recorded. I believe the only studio recordings  (apart from Callas) are Gwyneth Jones on Decca and Sylvia Sass on Hungaraton. All three of these use a hybrid version of the score, which uses an Italian transition and recitatives by the German composer Franz Lachner. However neither Jones nor Sass begin to challenge Callas's hegemony in the role. Here is a list of Callas performances that have appeared on disc at one time or another.

May 1953 - Maggio Musicale Fiorentino - Gui 
December 1953 - La Scala - Bernstein
September 1957 - La Scala/studio - Serafin
November 1958 - Dallas - Rescigno 
June 1959 - Covent Garden - Rescigno
December 1961 - La Scala - Schippers

Please also note that each conductor prepared their own version of the score, so they all differ musically in some way. Of these, the Schippers can quickly be discarded. Though there are flashes of the old Callas magic, she no longer has the requisite power and control to do the role full justice. The Covent Garden, with substantially the same cast as Dallas, enjoys better sound but is nowhere near as exciting as Dallas, so I would probably ditch that too. The Gui/Florence performance has a lot to commend it, and is interesting in housing Callas's first thoughts on the role, but the Bernstein is even better so I would probably end up ditching that too. The other 3 are all worth hearing.


The studio recording, not, as it happens, made for EMI (Walter Legge would have nothing to do with the project) but for the Italian firm of Ricordi is actually nowhere near on the same level as Bernstein or Rescigno, but it is in reasonably good stereo sound, and for that reason alone is worth owning. And, in this of all roles, even a slightly off form Callas outshines the efforts of both Jones and Sass in their studio recordings. For many years I was perfectly happy with it, but, then I hadn't heard what she does with the role under Bernstein (at La Scala), and Rescigno (in Dallas).

The Bernstein finds Callas in sovereign voice. As one contemporary commentator put it, she sounds as if she was born singing it. The roles many demands are met full on and dispatched with ease. Vocally it is a tour de force, and, for that reason, demands to be heard. However, by the time of the Dallas performances, Callas had substantially refined her charactersiation. This performance was recorded the night Rudolf Bing cancelled her Met contract, and many said she sounded as if she were hurling all her vitriol at him. Maybe she was... However we don't just get the fire eating, vengeful Medea. We also see the woman consumed with love for the man who bore her children, driven to the terrible acts she commits because of his duplicity. Furthermore, the cast also includes Jon Vickers as Jason and Teresa Berganza as Neris, a truly stellar cast. If I could only have one of her Medeas, this would be it (with a slightly regretful glance at Bernstein).

Thanks very much for this! I've ordered the two live versions that you recommended - the Bernstein is available on Amazon for download for less than £2.50! I find I usually prefer live recordings of operas to studio ones, even if it means the sound is less good.

[sospiro]

Can someone recommend a good biography? I understand Anne Edwards has written a couple.

Thanks

[Tsaraslondon]

Can someone recommend a good biography? I understand Anne Edwards has written a couple.

Thanks

The Anne Edwards is pretty much tabloid trash. The best biography is probably Michael Scott's Maria Meneghini Callas. Scott, a musician as well as a writer, tries to explain what it was that made Callas great, rather than concentrating on the scandals that dogged her life. For most other biographers, the fact that Callas was a singer and a musician is almost incidental. Their interest is in the post Onassis period, which, musically at least, was the least interesting part of Callas's life.

Another good read is Stelios Galatapolous's Sacred Monster, written by someone who knew her and saw her perform on many occasions.

John Ardoin's The Callas Legacy discusses every one of Callas's recorded performances, and is an absolute must.