Callas in Cavalleria rusticana

Santuzza in Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana was, as far as we know, the first complete operatic rôle that Maria Callas sang on stage—in April 1939, as a fifteen-year-old student in Athens. (As a schoolgirl in New York, she did sing in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.)

Callas sang Santuzza’s big aria, “Voi lo sapete,” several times in Greece and during her 1973-74 concert tour with Giuseppe di Stefano.

Michael Scott, among others, claims to hear stark differences in Callas’s vocalism and general approach between this 1953 commercial set of Cavalleria, recorded when Callas had just begun losing weight, and her recording of Leoncavallo’s I pagliacci, set down about a year later when she was a sylph. Callas’s sound does seem darker and thicker in Cavalleria, though one could argue that the music and the rôle require an earthier timbre.

I’ll post material from Pagliacci aria later this week so that you can compare Callas’s performances. If you want to hear how Callas sang Cavalleria during her tour with di Stefano, there are many excerpts on YouTube, one sadder than the next.

I confess that I have avoided posting material from Cavalleria rusticana because I cannot abide this tawdry, bombastic opera. Giovanni Verga’s novella “Cavalleria rusticana” is a spare and devastating work, and I find that Mascagni’s opera preserves little of its flavor.

Worth noting: Gemma Bellincioni, the first Santuzza, also sang Violetta and Salome. (Verdi heard and admired her as Violetta some twenty years before the Cavalleria excerpt was recorded.)