Maria Callas - Callas Sings Verdi Arias (Remastered) - Warner Classics 2014 - CD info
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MICHEL ROUBINET & Translation: Susannah Howe
Unimaginable as it may seen, Maria Callas’s ability to sing Verdi was initially questioned in Italy – as it turned out, however, she would go on to perform more works by him in the opera house than she did by any other composer: ten different roles between 1948 and 1957. Paradoxically, when it came to recording her first Verdi recital (1958), she was about to bid farewell to the last of the ten still in her repertoire: Violetta in La traviata, which she last played in Lisbon (a performance captured by EMI), London (also recorded, and marked by its incredible dramatic intensity) and Dallas. Her opera career then slowed almost to a standstill; for a while she gave a greater number of concerts, but these too tailed off after 1960. The pent-up exhaustion of a life devoted since youth to her career, to the detriment of her personal life, and then separation from her husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini (1895–1981), meant that Callas was experiencing turbulent times at the turn of the 1960s. Her voice, which she had always used to the full, without moderation (the idea of lessening her vocal and dramatic commitment to her art in order to protect and preserve her instrument would never have entered her head), was by then showing clear signs of fragility, especially in the upper register. Though she made few public appearances between 1960 and 1963, as the tension they caused had become too gruelling, she did spend a considerable amount of time in the studio, using recording as a key tool in regaining control of her vocal potential and rebuilding her self-confidence. It was in this context that she made this second Verdi recording, among others. Only one of the roles included here reflects her stage career, that of Elisabetta, to which she adds that of Eboli, which she had sung in concert. The two scenes for Mina from Aroldo are astonishing (‘Ciel, ch’io respiri!’ and ‘Oh Cielo! Dove son io?’). As for Desdemona’s great monologue, it would silence the harshest of critics, especially her charming rendition of the ‘Ave Maria’, genuinely prayer-like in its perfect simplicity and styling. The immaculate phrasing provides exceptional testimony of Callas’s gift for revealing the internal rhythms of the music.
Maria Callas
Was born to a Greek family in New York in 1923. Her vocal training took place in Athens, where her teacher was the coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who had sung with Enrico Caruso and Feodor Chaliapin. After early performances in Greece, Callas’s international career was launched in 1947 when she performed the title role in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda at the Arena di Verona in Italy.
Her voice defied simple classification and her artistic range was extraordinary. In her early twenties she sang such heavy dramatic roles as Gioconda, Turandot, Brünnhilde and Isolde, but over the course of her career her most famous roles came to be: Bellini’s Norma and Amina (La sonnambula); Verdi’s Violetta (La traviata); Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena, Cherubini’s Medea and Puccini’s Tosca. Though her timbre was not always conventionally beautiful, Callas’s musicianship and phrasing were in a class of their own. She brought characters to vivid life with her skill in colouring her tone and making insightful use of the text.
She is credited with changing the history of opera: by placing a perhaps unprecedented emphasis on musical integrity and dramatic truth, and by transforming perceptions – and reviving the fortunes – of the bel canto repertoire, particularly Bellini and Donizetti.
The 1950s marked the height of Callas’s career. Its base lay in the opera houses of Italy, and she became the prima donna assoluta of Milan’s legendary La Scala – notably in the productions of Luchino Visconti – but her operatic appearances also encompassed London’s Royal Opera House, the New York Metropolitan Opera, Paris Opéra, the Vienna State Opera, and the opera houses of Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Lisbon, and, in the early 1950s, Mexico City, São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro.
From 1959, when she started a life-changing love affair with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, her performing career slowed down and her voice became more fragile. Her final stage performances came in 1965, when she was only 42.
There were many plans for a return to the stage – and for further complete recordings – but they never reached fruition, though in 1974 she gave a series of concerts in Europe, North America and Japan with the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano; he had partnered her frequently in the opera house and in the studio, not least in the 1953 La Scala Tosca under Victor de Sabata, considered a landmark in recording history. Callas died alone in her Paris apartment in September 1977.
