The Callas Rarities (1953–1969) - Callas Remastered Maria Callas

Cover The Callas Rarities (1953–1969) - Callas Remastered

Album info

Album-Release:
1969

HRA-Release:
29.09.2014

Label: Warner Classics

Genre: Classical

Subgenre: Opera

Artist: Maria Callas

Album including Album cover Booklet (PDF)

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  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791): Don Giovanni (Da Ponte)
  • 1Non mi dir (Act II) (Take 1)05:23
  • 2Non mi dir (Act II) (Take 2)05:09
  • Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901): Macbeth (Piave)
  • 3Macbeth, Act 4: Una macchia è qui tuttora (Lady Macbeth)11:19
  • Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868):
  • 4Semiramide, Act 1: Bel raggio lusinghier (Semiramide)05:41
  • Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901): I vespri siciliani (Caimi)
  • 5I vespri siciliani, Act 4: Arrigo! Ah, parli a un core (Elena)04:13
  • Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848): Lucrezia Borgia, Act 1:
  • 6Tranquillo ei posa...Com’è bello (Prologue)08:09
  • Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868): Guglielmo Tell, Act 2
  • 7S'allontanano alfine ... Selva opaca (Mathilde)08:32
  • Semiramide, Act 1:
  • 8Bel raggio lusinghier (Semiramide)05:28
  • Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835): Il pirata, Act 1
  • 9Sorgete ... Lo sognai ferito, esangue (Imogene, Adele, Itulbo, Chorus)09:31
  • Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901): Don Carlo, Act 4
  • 10O don fatale (Elisabeth of Valois)04:36
  • Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868): La Cenerentola, Act 2
  • 11Nacqui all'affanno e al pianto.....Non pi? mesta (Angelina)06:14
  • Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826): Oberon, Act 2
  • 12Ozean, Du Ungeheuer (Reiza) - Sung in English08:14
  • Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901): Aida, Act 3
  • 13Pur ti riveggo, mia dolce Aida09:44
  • I lombardi alla prima crociata, Act 1
  • 14Te, Vergin santa (Viclinda)03:57
  • Il trovatore, Act 4
  • 15Vanne ... D'amor sull' ali rosee (Leonora)06:34
  • I vespri siciliani, Act 4
  • 16Arrigo! Ah, parli a un core (Elena)03:45
  • Attila, Act 1
  • 17Liberamente or piangi ... Oh! nel fuggente nuvolo (Odabella)04:51
  • Il corsaro, Act 2
  • 18Verró...Ah conforto è sol la speme (Medora)02:08
  • I lombardi alla prima crociata, Act 1
  • 19Te, Vergin santa (Viclinda)03:22
  • Total Runtime01:56:50

Info for The Callas Rarities (1953–1969) - Callas Remastered

The tracks on this album were recorded over a period of no less than 16 years. The earliest, the two versions of Donna Anna’s ‘Non mi dir’, date from 1953, and were intended to test microphone placings before Callas made her first commercial recording for EMI: Lucia di Lammermoor. The latest, the Verdi arias recorded with Nicola Rescigno in 1964–1965 and 1969, were never approved for release by the soprano. When Callas Rarities was first released in 1993, Gramophone wrote: ‘Each item, each phrase almost, has something to be said about it: the whole collection makes essential listening.’

Maria Callas, soprano

Digitally remastered


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.

Booklet for The Callas Rarities (1953–1969) - Callas Remastered

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