Late Callas?

This clip purports to reproduce Maria Callas’s singing in 1976, just over a year before she died. If the date is correct, I believe that her accompanist is Jeffrey Tate. The piece, incomplete, is Beethoven’s concert aria “Ah, perfido!”

Callas’s singing here, while not at the level of her great years, is vastly superior to what it was in the unlistenable Philips recordings of 1972 and the tour with di Stefano.

There is a recording supposedly of a practice session in 1977 which, again, finds Callas in relatively free and imposing voice. (That recording was kicking around YouTube, but I am unable to locate it now.)

If these snippets are accurately dated, then perhaps Tito Gobbi was right when he said that Callas never lost her voice, only her nerve.

What do you think? I find it hard to believe that the gasping, monumentally insecure Callas of the early 1970s could reclaim this much voice—but, again, Callas and many of her associates maintained that, to the end, she could sing well without the pressure of an audience.