Callas in Parsifal II

Yesterday we heard “canonical” Callas, in Bellini; today we turn to “marginal” Callas. (Does such a thing exist?)

Maria Callas sang the rôle of Kundry in Wagner’s Parsifal only five times, in 1949 and 1950. One chronicler says that she was to have sung it at La Scala in 1956 instead of Giordano’s Fedora.

Kundry seems to me a rôle that Callas could have sung comfortably into the 1960s, one that might have been a plausible comeback vehicle even as late as the 1970s (when she had reportedly signed on to sing Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther at the Opéra de Paris). One sticking point, I suspect, is that the opera is called Parisifal, not Kundry, though Parisfal is a cipher and Kundry is the character who draws us—well, draws me—to this opera. Another is that, by the 1960s and 1970s, the tradition of singing opera in the audience’s lingua franca and not in the work’s “original” language had been lost.

In The Newly Born Woman by Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, we read of Kundry:

We learn that she has been damned ever since, in a mythical time, she laughed at Christ’s passage—accursed laughter that she will carry within her until the end of time. She is the feminine counterpart of the Wandering Jew, assigned by Klingsor to the young Parsifal in order to seduce him. She thinks she will succeed in this by speaking the name of his mother, but the other’s chastity prevents their coming together and permits him to “save” Kundry at the moment of the spell of Good Friday… She is the madwoman who names, who names the mother; she is also the laugh that disperses, that is the symbol of sexuality whose act is what is forbidden in this opera. It is also she who wounded Amfortas; her laugh keeps a wide gash bleeding…

Have you ever heard a sexier-sounding Kundry?

Hear Maria Callas (and Giacinto Prandelli) in other music by Wagner.

Giacinto Prandelli, 1914 – 2010

Giacinto Prandelli, a supremely elegant and intelligent artist, died last week in Milan at the age of 96. The obituary from Bresciaoggi includes a photo of him with Ingrid Bergman.

Both a tenor and a musician, Prandelli was esteemed by the greatest conductors of his time, including Arturo Toscanini, Victor de Sabata, and Guido Cantelli. He was Belmonte to Maria Callas’s Costanze in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail at La Scala; and he was Alfredo to her Violetta in 1951 (Bergamo) and again in 1955, after Giuseppe di Stefano abandoned the Visconti staging of Verdi’s La traviata at La Scala.

I don’t know whether Prandelli portrayed Wagner’s Lohengrin on stage, but on disc, as you can hear, he was perfect in this rôle—stately, intensely poetic, possessed of an otherworldly aura.

Riposa in pace, egregio e valente maestro, e grazie.

Callas in Parsifal

Maria Callas sang the rôle of Kundry in Richard Wagner’s Parsifal five times in 1949 and 1950. It was in this opera that she first caught the attention of Luchino Visconti. He recalled:

The first time I saw Maria was when she was still enormous. She was half naked in the second act, covered with yards and yards of transparent chiffon—a marvellous temptress, like an odalisque… Every night she sang I secured a certain box and shouted like a mad fanatic when she took her bows. I sent her flowers. She was beautiful but fat on stage, commanding—her gestures thrilled you.

Renata Scotto laughed at the fat, graceless Callas before attending Parsifal but then, à la Kundry, was thunderstruck. “Little by little this voice had all the nature in it—the forest and the magic castle and hatred that is love. And little by little she not fat with bad skin and rich-husband-asleep-in-the-corner; she witch who burn you by standing there.”

As you can hear, Kundry was an extraordinarily congenial rôle for Callas. By some accounts, she was scheduled to sing it at La Scala in 1956 instead of Giordano’s Fedora.

As it happens, Marianne Brandt, who sang Kundry in the second performance of Parsifal in 1882, studied under Pauline Viardot. Brandt’s repertoire included Le Prophète, Lucrezia Borgia, La Favorite, Il trovatore, and other operas requiring a superb command of florid music.

Wagner is supremely ill-served by barkers, shouters, and vocalists lacking the musical polish (and elemental sensuality) of a Callas. She observed, correctly, “Wagner could never hurt your voice, if you know how to sing well.”

Callas and Isolde

Beauty can pierce one like pain.
Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks
Maria Callas set down this recording of Isolde’s Transfiguration from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in November of 1949, a month before she turned 26.

To me, she is the most human and girlish of Isoldes, though her voice also has dark, liquid depths in which one can drown. Only an artist who has come to grips with Bellini can sing Wagner’s music with this degree of mastery. (The converse does not hold true, and this would have pained Wagner.)

Callas portrayed Isolde a dozen times between 1947 and 1950. It was one of her three Wagnerian rôles, along with Kundry in Parsifal and the Walküre Brünnhilde. The Transfiguration remained in her concert repertoire, and she reportedly considered reprising Isolde at La Scala in the early 1960s.