Callas sings Operatic Arias by Puccini - Callas Remastered Maria Callas

• 1Manon Lescaut, Act 2: In quelle trine morbide (Manon Lescaut)02:55
• 2Manon Lescaut, Act 4: Sola, perduta, abbandonata (Manon Lescaut)05:52
• 3Madama Butterfly, Act 2: Un bel di vedremo (Madama Butterfly)04:34
• 4Madama Butterfly, Act 2: Con onor muore (Madama Butterfly)03:43
• 5La bohème, Act 1: Si Mi chiamano Mimi (Mimi)04:49
• 6La bohème, Act 3: Donde lieta usci (Mimi)03:20
• 7Suor Angelica, 'Sister Angelica': Senza mamma (Sister Angelica)05:33
• 8Gianni Schicchi, Act 1: O mio babbino caro (Lauretta)02:35
• 9Turandot, Act 1: Signore, ascolta! (Turandot)02:29
• 10Turandot, Act 2: In questa reggia (Turandot)06:24
• 11Turandot, Act 3: Tu, che di gel sei cinta (Turandot)02:45
• Total Runtime44:59

Info for Callas sings Operatic Arias by Puccini - Callas Remastered

Callas came to be closely identified with Tosca,and it was the only Puccini role she sang with any frequency during her reign as a prima donna. Turandot had figured prominently in her early career, and she performed Cio-Cio San (Madama Butterfly) three times in Chicago in 1955, but all the other characters in this recital did not figure in her stage repertoire. Yet, as Gramophone said when this album was first released: ‘To each and every aria she brings the stamp of an individual artistry, something of character acting, and a concern for the dramatic and musical shaping of the aria which is very unlike the sort of Puccini singing we usually hear today.’

Maria Callas, soprano
Philharmonia Orchestra
Tullio Serafin, conductor

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.

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