Callas in Ballo III

At Verdi Duecento, I posted some very interesting comments by Gabriele Baldini about Un ballo in maschera.

My thoughts naturally turned to Maria Callas, and I decided to revisit one of her “late” (post-Meneghini) recordings: Amelia’s Act III aria, “Morrò, ma prima in grazia,” from Ballo. Nicola Rescigno conducts, and the recording was made in April 1964.

I have two thoughts about this recording. First, if it is true, as some claim, that a “secret son” of Callas and Onassis died only three years before, then recording this aria must have been extremely trying for Callas.

I shall die, but first grant me the grace of pressing my only son to my breast. And if you deny this last favor to your wife, do not deny it to the pleas of my maternal heart. I shall die, but let his kisses console (the torment) inside me, now that the last of my fleeting hours has come. His hand will reach out over the eyes of his mother, killed by his father, whom he shall never see again!

Second, Callas is in splendid voice. Her tone is drenched in sadness, and her phrasing, while eloquent, seems so natural and inevitable.

I do have my doubts about the very last sovracuto. (Does anyone else find that it sounds spliced in?).

Still, what a pity that Callas would withdraw from the stage about a year later, and that her pride would not allow her to go on singing if she was no longer mistress of Norma, the most cruelly taxing of rôles.

Callas sings Bellini II

In late 1957, Maria Callas sang a concert at the Dallas Civic Opera that included arias from Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Bellini’s I puritani, Verdi’s Macbeth and La traviata, and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena.

Many claim that Callas’s voice was in precipitous decline in 1957, but neither her hair-raising Dallas program nor her supple, easy singing therein support that claim. The Dallas concert itself was not recorded, but the rehearsal was, and she sang the Puritani mad scene with her customary pathos and flair (the downward runs in particular sounding like cascades of diamonds). What’s more, she ended the scene with a huge high E-flat.

Her singing here—with a trusted colleague and friend, Nicola Rescigno, and without the pressure of a “gala” audience—to me suggests that Tito Gobbi was perhaps right. He opined that Callas, “desperately nervous” and a “vulnerable, lonely, elusive” creature, never lost her voice but lost her nerve.

Hear Maria Callas in other music by Bellini.

Callas in Don Carlo

Maria Callas sang the rôle of Elisabeth in Verdi’s Don Carlos in a single run of performances at La Scala in 1954. Well, more precisely, she sang the rôle of Elisabetta in Don Carlo, though I have no information about the particular edition performed at La Scala beyond the fact that it was in Italian.

She had been scheduled to portray Elisabetta on two other occasions in the early 1950s but cancelled because of illness. (In those years, a Callas cancellation was not automatically a “scandal.”)

“Tu che le vanità” remained a staple in her concert repertoire. She sang it frequently in her 1959 tour and also in her sad “comeback” tour with di Stefano in 1973–74. She also recorded it for EMI under Nicola Rescigno in 1958, the performance I offer you today.

Verdi’s music is at its darkest and most brooding in Don Carlo, now recognized as a supreme masterpiece, but still something of a rarity in the 1950s. Callas’s tone occasionally turns watery (EMI’s brutally close miking doesn’t help), but she makes a grandiose whole of this varied and episodic scena. For all of Elisabetta’s nobility, Callas allows us to hear the young, once hopeful woman now crushed beneath the weight of court intrigues and dynastic politics.

At “la pace dell’avel,” Callas’s Elisabetta looks deep into the abyss, and we along with her.

Hear Maria Callas in other music by Verdi.

Maria Callas sings Verdi

On Saturday, 9 October, Giuseppe Verdi turns 197 years young. (Actually, it seems that he was born on 10 October but, as Marcello Conati reports, Verdi himself always celebrated his birthday on 9 October.) This week’s posts, then, will be devoted to music by Verdi.

Maria Callas scored an historic triumph in Verdi’s Macbeth at La Scala in 1952 but never again sang the rôle of Lady Macbeth. About two years earlier, she had sung an audition for Toscanini for a Macbeth that was to have been staged in Busseto, but because of the maestro’s great age and fragile health, that production never came to be. (Some say, though, that Toscanini’s admiration for Callas finally led Antonio Ghiringhelli to offer her a proper contract at La Scala.)

Macbeth was also at the center of two Callas “scandals” of the late 1950s: The dispute with Rudolf Bing that eventually led to his firing her from the Met; and her troubles with Kurt Herbert Adler and the San Francisco Opera. The supposed Macbeth curse does seem to have pursued Callas!

Maria Callas recorded Lady Macbeth’s three great scenes under Nicola Rescigno in 1958, and they are among her finest recordings. Lady Macbeth’s entry in 1958 is less monumental in terms of vocal tone, perhaps, than the 1952 Scala pirate, but it is fiercer, with lashing attacks and a more propulsive quality than Callas had mustered earlier.

Some of the credit for this must go to Nicola Rescigno. I’ve said it before: He was a much underrated maestro, not at the level of a Muti or a Toscanini (who is?), but a sensitive and honorable musician.

Hear Maria Callas in other music by Verdi, including video of this same aria sung in concert.

Callas in Los Angeles

A relatively recent addition to the Callas legacy is her November 1958 Los Angeles concert under Nicola Rescigno.

The program included arias by Thomas, Boito, Puccini, Verdi, Rossini, and “Tu che invoco” from Spontini’s La vestale, the opera with which Callas had opened the 1954-55 La Scala season.

While this selection from the Los Angeles concert has the usual problems of distortion and muffled sound that one hears in “live” recordings of the era, it is very interesting because it documents Callas in impressive voice and gives an idea of what her voice sounded like in the theatre, with “air” around it. Unfortunately, she does end the Spontini scene with a high note that is ugly as both vocalism and music-making.

Earlier this year, I posted other material relating to La vestale, including rehearsal photos and footage from the Scala production.

Callas in Verdi’s Ernani

Maria Callas never sang the rôle of Elvira in Verdi’s Ernani on stage, though there was chatter in the 1950s of a possible La Scala production. More’s the pity, because she had everything needed by the heroines of Verdi’s youthful operas: Agility, fire in the belly, rhythmic flair, and that feeling of almost devilish energy that separates the true Verdians from the impostors.

(By the way, Verdi, in his letters, wrote admiringly of singers who had il diavolo addosso, “the devil on their backs.”)

Maria Callas recorded Elvira’s cavatina “Ernani, Ernani involami!” in 1958 with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Nicola Rescigno. Some consider the late Maestro Rescigno a hack or a mere time-beater, but I have always admired his conducting. Listen, for example, to the sultry, gorgeous thing he and the Philharmonia make of the brief orchestral introduction to this aria.

I would point out, too, that Callas, never one to suffer fools gladly, trusted and respected Rescigno and worked with him whenever she could. He also seems to have been a lovely human being.

Walter Legge, who had dreadful things to say about Callas’s character, recalled that she was an easy-going colleague, who approved this take of “Ernani, Ernani involami!” on the spot after Legge praised Rescigno’s buoyant, energetic tempi. She sang the aria frequently during her 1959 and 1962 concert tours.

Callas in Mozart

Maria Callas sang only one rôle by Mozart in the theatre: Kostanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. I posted earlier her remarkable performance of “Marten aller Arten” and her reflections on Mozartian style.

In 1963 and 1964, Callas recorded several Mozart arias for EMI, including Donna Elvira’s “Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata.” I am without my notes today, but to the best of my recollection, Callas essentially sight-read this particular aria and may have recorded it in a single take. Peter Andry alleges that Callas made the decision to record Mozart in a moment of pique, to show Walter Legge that she could sing his wife Elizabeth Schwarzkopf’s repertoire.

Whatever the back-story, Callas (at ago 40) was in fragile voice when she recorded this aria under Nicola Rescigno, though her rigorous musicianship is often in evidence.

Interesting to note: During her Greek years, Callas’s Mozart repertoire included Zerlina’s “Batti, batti” from Don Giovanni and the sublime “Et incarnatus est” from the Große Messe. She returned to “Mi tradì” at a private concert in Geneva in 1970. On that occasion, she reportedly wished to practice singing in front of an audience after some five years away from the stage. The few accounts I’ve read of this concert suggest that it was an unhappy undertaking.

Hear Maria Callas in other music by Mozart.

Callas and Verdi’s Otello

Verdi’s Otello had little importance in Maria Callas’s career. She recorded the Willow Song and Ave Maria for EMI in Paris in 1963. She also taught these selections (along with Iago’s Credo) during her Juilliard master classes.

In 1972 and 1973, Callas set down for Philips a pitifully tentative rendition of the love duet from Act I of Otello with Giuseppe di Stefano. That recording was kicking around YouTube earlier this year and is best left unheard.

Maria Callas also sang music from Rossini’s Otello on at least one occasion, in Thessaloníki in 1943.

Her rendition of Verdi’s “Ave Maria” is simple and inward, as befits this beautiful aria. The orchestra is led by Nicola Rescigno.

Please listen to Maria Callas in other music by Verdi.

Callas in La traviata II

Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata was among the rôles that Maria Callas performed most frequently (along with Norma and Lucia). On more than one occasion, she remarked that she felt a spiritual kinship with Verdi’s noble, self-sacrificing courtesan.

Callas’s 1958 Covent Garden run of La traviata was her next-to-last encounter with Violetta. She sang two more performances in Dallas and reportedly committed to recording the opera (with a young Luciano Pavarotti) as late as 1968 or 1969, though she ultimately backed out of the project.

The company for La traviata at Covent Garden was strong. Nicola Rescigno conducted, Cesare Valletti was Alfredo, and Mario Zanasi was Germont. Callas was in inspired form—and also exhausted and discouraged following the Rome Norma brouhaha, surgery, and her break with La Scala. A few months later, in fact, during a BBC interview, she raised the possibility of retiring.

The Act II duet with Germont was a high point of the Covent Garden Traviata. As many writers have observed, Callas somehow managed to stop time and distill all of Violetta’s anguish and sacrifice in that hushed, suspended note leading into “Dite alla giovine.” (To paraphrase one of the YouTube comments, we hear not a voice but a soul.)

(I apologize for your having to click through to hear the clip, but embedding is disabled.)