Lyric and coloratura arias (1954) - Callas Remastered Maria Callas

• 1Adriana Lecouvreur, Act 1: Ecco: respiro appena...Io son l'umile ancella (Adriana Lecouvreur)03:50
• 2Adriana Lecouvreur, Act 4: Poveri fiori (Adriana Lecouvreur)03:12
• 3Andrea Chénier, Act 3: La mamma morta (Maddalena)04:53
• 4La Wally, Act 1: Ebben?...Ne andrò lontana (Wally)04:51
• 5Mefistofele, Act 3: L'altra notte (Elena)07:27
• 6Il barbiere di Siviglia, Act 1: Una voce poco fa (Rosina)06:52
• 7Dinorah, '(Le) pardon de Ploërmel', Act 2: Ombre légère (Dinorah - Shadow Song) Sung in Italian05:41
• 8Lakmé, Act 2: Où va la jeune indoue (Lakmé) - Sung in Italian08:05
• 9I vespri Siciliani, Act 5: Mercè, dilette amiche (Elena)04:00
• Total Runtime48:51

Info for Lyric and coloratura arias (1954) - Callas Remastered

As this recital amply demonstrates, Maria Callas encompassed an extraordinary range of roles. She is as convincing in the pinpoint coloratura of Lakmé’s ‘Bel lSong’ (‘Her chromatic scale is beautifully done and she sails up to the region known as in alt with the greatest ease,’ said Gramophone) as in the sweeping, richly-coloured lines of Maddalena’s ‘La mamma morta’ from Andrea Chénier, famously and movingly featured on the soundtrack of the 1993 Hollywood film Philadelphia.‘There is great tenderness and simplicity, deep emotion,and the most lovely moulding of the vocal phrases,’wrote Gramophone, ‘Madame Callas’s characterisations… are nothing less than superb, and altogether there is some of her finest singing yet recorded.’

Maria Callas, soprano
Philharmonia Orchestra
Milan Teatro alla Scala 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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