review – Page 17 – Philip's Assortment Box

Posted on October 14, 2017May 21, 2020 by tsaraslondon · 2 Comments

Callas in Aida – Mexico City 1951

A few months ago, I reviewed this performance HERE as part of a comparative review of five different Aida recordings, so I don’t propose to go into too much detail, as you can read that review by clicking on the above link.

As for the sound, this Warner re-master is a good deal better than the old Virtuoso version I owned before, which was almost unlistenable, but, yet again, in conversation with other Callas fans on the net, I am told that there are better versions than Warner out there, not least Ars Vocalis. The problem with this is that these can be difficult to come by (only available for a short time on ebay) and the Warners are readily and cheaply available from Amazon and the like. As such, this Warner re-master is not at all bad, and easily more listenable than what I had before, the voices coming through much more clearly.

To reiterate what I said back in March, this is a performance in primary colours, which befits its surroundings. The audience is a palpable presence, and when Callas hurls out that magnificent top Eb in the Triumphal Scene, they almost tear the place apart. Subtlety, from any of the singers, is not to be expected, though Callas of course sings with her customary musical intelligence. She is in superb voice throughout, though the top C climax to O patria mia, a firm but not exactly dolce note, is not ideal. She recovers quickly to sing a seethingly dramatic Nile Scene with Giuseppe Taddei’s excellent, implacable and forceful Amonasro. My yardstick for this duet has always been the Callas/Gobbi confrontation on the studio set, but this one is almost its equal. What it lacks is Serafin’s superbly sympathetic conducting (I know of no other conductor who makes the violins weep the way he does in those repeated figures as Aida sings about how much her country costs her). In any case, no other soprano digs as deeply into the words as she does at O patria, patria, quanto mi costi. On this occasion, unusually for her, she adds some extraneous sobs, which she will eschew in both the performance under Barbirolli at Covent Garden in 1953, and for the studio recording of 1955 (the last time she sang the role).

Del Monaco tends to sing everything forte, but the voice itself is in spendid shape. The local girl, Oralia Dominguez, in her role debut, and Giuseppe Taddei both display voices in full bloom and are thoroughly involved in the drama. All in all it isn’t the most subtle of performances you will hear but it is full of thrills and undenyably exciting and I can only imagine what it would have been like in the audience.

Back in March, when I reviewed this alongside the live Barbirolli from Covent Garden, the studio recording, Karajan’s second recording of the opera and the latest one from Pappano, I ultimately came down in favour if the 1955 Callas studio recording, and, though in somewhat leaner voice, there are still moments I prefer the greater subtlety she brings to her performance there. However, by 1955 Aida was no longer in her repertoire. This one gives us a better idea of how thrilling her Aida must have been in the theatre. A character who can sometimes seem no more than a cypher, the archetype of the woman torn between love and duty, becomes a real, passionate flesh and blood woman. Even taking into consideration the distinctly lo-fi sound, this would be my favourite performance of the opera.

Posted on October 13, 2017March 23, 2020 by tsaraslondon · 3 Comments

Callas in I Vespri Siciliani – Florence 1951

Florence and the Maggio Musicale, Fiorentino played a great part in Callas’s early career. It was at Florence’s Teatro Comunale that she debuted Norma, Violetta and Medea all of which were to become quintessential Callas roles. Other roles she sang there were Elvira in I Puritani, Armida (in which she had a spectacular success, though she never sang the role again), Lucia di Lammermoor (around the time of her first complete recording, which also used Florence resources), and her first Elena in I Vespri Siciliani, under Erich Kleiber. That year she also undertook the role of Euridice in Haydn’s Orfeo ed Euridice (its first ever performance, given at the tiny Teatro della Pergola, also under Kleieber).

The success of this production of I Vespri Siciliani finally made Antonio Ghiringhelli, the Sovrintendete of La Scala, Milan, who had for some reason taken an instant dislike to Callas, offer her her first season at La Scala. Later that year she would open the La Scala season in the same opera, I Vespri Siciliani, though this time under the baton of Victor De Sabata. For that same season she was also engaged for Norma and the role of Costanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, its first ever performance at La Scala. The opera was sung in Italian, and this was to be the only Mozart opera Callas ever sang. La Scala became her artistic, and geographical, home for the next seven years, and it became a period of extrordinary artistic achievement, allowing Callas to work with directors like Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Margarita Wallmann, Carl Ebert and Herbert Graf; conductors like Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Victor De Sabata and Carlo Maria Giulini. Most of her recordings were also made under the imprimatur of La Scala too, and she is to this day indelibly associated with the theatre.

No recording exists of the La Scala I Vespri Siciliani, so we are fortunate indeed that we have this recording from Florence. Like most of her live recordings from Florence, the sound has never been good, though in 2007 Testament issued a clearer transfer from tapes made for Walter Legge, who was using them to audition Callas. This Warner issue would appear to be a clone of the Testament transfer, with the overture, which wasn’t recorded for Legge, tacked on from another source. As such, I found it no better nor worse than the Testament issue, but, though the sound distorts and overloads quite a bit, it is worth persevering for Callas is in superb voice, in a wide-ranging role that takes her from a low F# in Arrigo, ah parli a un core to a top E in the Siciliana in Act V.

Lord Harewood was in the audience for one of the rehearsals of the Florence production and recalls precisely the effect of her entrance aria,

Act I of Vespri begins slowly; rival parties of occupying French and downtrodden Sicilians take up their positions on either side of the stage and glare at each other. The French have been boasting for some time of the privileges which belong by right to an army of occupation, when a female figure – the Sicilian Duchess Elena – is seen slowly crossing the square. Doubtless the music and the production helped to spotlight Elena, but, though Callas had not yet sung and was not even wearing her costume, one was straight away impressed by the natural dignity of her carriage, the air of quiet, innate authority which went with every movement. The French order her to sing for their entertainment, and mezza voce she starts a song, a slow cantabile melody; there is as complete control over the music as there had been over the stage. The song is a ballad, but it ends with the words “Il vostro fato è in vostra man” (Your fate is in your hand), delivered with concentrated meaning. The phrase is repeated with even more intensity, and suddenly the music becomes a cabaletta of electrifying force, the singer peals forth arpeggios and top notes and the French only wake up to the fact that they have permitted a patriotic demonstration under their very noses once it is under way. It was a completely convincing operatic moment, and Callas held the listeners in the palm of her hand to produce a tension that was almost unbearable until exhilaratingly released in the cabaletta.

Though we cannot see the impression she made, her very first words, Si canteró exude calm authority, with an undercurrent that suggests that, though she has agreed to sing, the French will not necessarily like what they hear. She starts almost mystically, gradually as Harewood describes, suffusing her tone with more pointed meaning at the words Il vostro fato è in vostro man. She then launches the cabaletta, Coraggio, su coraggio, almost sotto voce, building the tension as she starts to sing out with more force, her command of the wide leaps and coloratura staggering in its ease, the top of her voice gleaming and powerful. It is, as Lord Harewood suggests, a masterclass in how to use music to dramatic ends.

There is a good deal more to her Elena than that, though. She can be meltingly lyrical in the love music, such as in the beautiful mini aria Arrigo, ah parli a un core (though she only touches the low F# in its cadenza) and blithely suave and elegent in the Act V Siciliana, Merce, dilette amiche, notable for its light, breezy runs and an interpolated high E at its close. Few singers before or since can have so easily encompassed its vocal demands, whilst creating a character both sympathetic and imposing. There is never any doubt, from first note to last, that this Elena is an aristocrat; there are parallels here with Callas’s superb Leonora in Il Trovatore.

Of the supporting cast, Christoff, who also played the role at La Scala is a vocally resplendent and authoratative Procida, Mascherini a not particularly interesting Monforte. Giorgio Kokolios-Bardi, who sings the role of Arrigo, was a Greek tenor, whom Callas no doubt knew from her Athens Opera days. Occasionaly he phrases with a real sense of line, but just as often his singing lacks distinction. He was replaced by Eugene Conley at La Scala.

Erich Kleiber makes quite a few cuts in the sprawling score, but has a sure sense of its dramatic shape. There is a story that, at one point in rehearsals, he shouted out to Callas, “Maria, watch me,” to which she replied, “No, maestro, your eye sight is better than mine. You watch me.” Whatever the truth of this, they seem entirely at one in the performance, though I did wonder if Kleiber took the aforementioned Arrigo, ah parli a un core a tad to fast.

As I mentioned earlier in this review, I didn’t detect much improvement in the sound from the Testament issue of the performance, which in turn was quite a bit better than any heard before it was released. Nevertheless, this is essential Callas, and I wouldn’t want to be without it.

Posted on October 9, 2017March 23, 2020 by tsaraslondon · 2 Comments

Callas in Parsifal – Rome 1950

Chronologically the second recording in the Warner box set is Parsifal, which many no doubt will find an oddity. However one should remember that in the early part f her career, Callas sang quite a bit of Wagner. The next role after her Italian debut, was Isolde, which she sang in Venice, and then the following year in Genoa (with Max Lorenz as Tristan), and in Rome in 1950. She added the Walküre Brünnhilde in 1949, singing the role in Venice (when she famously deputised for an ailing Marherita Carosio in I Puritani, learning the role of Elvira whilst still singing Brünnhilde). She first sang the role of Kundry in 1949 in Rome, but this RAI concert performance heralded her farewell to Wagner, though she was supposed to sing Kundry again at La Scala in 1956 under Erich Kleiber, a project that was abandoned when the maestro died. It was rather surprisingly replaced by Fedora. Like all Italian Wagner productions in those days, the opera was sung in Italian.

Wagnerites will no doubt be put off by the language. They will no doubt be further bothered by the poor recording of the orchestra, though the singers are well caught. I can’t in all honesty say that this Warner issue is a marked improvement on the Verona transfer I had before, and, though there are some fine singers amongst the cast (Boris Christoff, no less, as Gurnemanz, Rolando Panerai as Amfortas), I found enjoyment of much of the opera seriously compromised by the dim orchestral sound.

However, it is wonderful to have this one example of Callas in a complete Wagner role, and Act II, where Kundry has the lion’s share of her music, had me gripped. Admittedly it is strange to hear the libretto in Italian, but the language does enable Callas to sing a more sensuously silken line than we often hear in the role and her Kundry is a true siren. She uses her superb legato to display the music’s beauty, a million miles from the barking Sprechgesang we often hear.

Despite the cuts to the score, Gui displays a firm understanding of the score, and, aside from Callas, has some excellent singers at his disposal; Boris Christoff as Gurnemanz, Rolando Panerai as Amfortas and Giuseppe Modesti as Klingsor. We even get Lina Pagliughi as the First Flower Maiden. Africo Baldelli’s Parsifal is adequate, no more no less.

The dimly recorded orchestral sound is a problem, especially in Wagner, and this recording could never be considered a contender for that reason. However it is much more than a curiosity, and Callas’s superbly sung Kundry certainly deserves to be heard.

Posted on October 7, 2017March 23, 2020 by tsaraslondon · 3 Comments

Callas in Nabucco – Naples 1949

One might think Abigaille a Callas role par excellence, but in fact she only ever sang the role at this series of performance in Naples in 1949, though she often programmed Anch’io dischiuso into her concert programmes. She is on record as calling the role a voice wrecker and advised Caballé against singing it. “It would be like putting a precious Baccarat glass in a box and shaking it. It would shatter,” she told her. Caballé heeded the advice and never sang the role. Callas’s words may seem a surprising statement, given Callas’s astounding assurance and brilliant execution of the role’s difficulties, but maybe she was right. After all, Giusppina Strepponi, the role’s creator and eventually Verdi’s second wife, retired practically voiceless at the age of 31, only a couple of years after she had such a success in it. Elena Souliotis forged her career in the role and had burned herself out in less than five years.

In terms of sound, this is one of the worst extant Callas broadcasts, and no amount of tweaking by the engineers is going to disguise that. It is at its worst in the last act, but, as Abigaille has so little to do in the last act, this affects Callas the least. That said, the Warner issue is clearer than any I’d heard before, though I’m told the one on Ars Vocalis is even better, if you can get your hands on it.

It is worth persevering with the sound, though, for this is the most thrilling performance of the role of Abigaille you are ever likely to hear. The young Callas ( she was 26 at the time) is in full command of the role’s many difficulties, tossing off the coloratura with demonic force as if it were the easiest thing in the world, the top of her voice rock solid and gleaming. She even exacerbates the role’s difficulties by interpolating a free and ringing high Eb in the Act III duet with Nabucco.

However there is much more than just power and ferocity to Callas’s Abigaille, and it is full of lovely details often overlooked by other singers. Note, after her barnstorming entrance, the way she softens her tone at the words Io t’amava, with a suggestion that she loves Ismaele still. The recitative Ben io t’invenni is thrillingly powerful, but she spins out the ensuing aria Anch’io dischiuso with Bellinian grace, tracing its filigree to heavenly lengths. In the duet with Nabucco she is exultantly triumphant, but this gives way to her most meltingly moving tones in the death scene, which unfortunately loses some of its effect due to the crackly recording. All in all, Callas’s Abigaille is a considerable achievement, and it is incredible that she can sing with such power, but with such needle fine accuracy in the coloratura.

Vittorio Gui conducts a tautly dramatic performance, but something strange happens during the chorus Va, pensiero, the end of which is drowned out by a cacophony of boos. He reprises the chorus and this time the audience go berserk cheering. This is presumably what going to the opera in Italy in those days was like.

Gino Bechi, a well-known baritone at the time, is an effective Nabucco, but not in Callas’s class, and no match for such as Gobbi, who recorded the role for Decca late in his career. The rest of the cast is perfectly adequate without being outstanding, but the recording, dreadful sound or not, is a must for Callas’s superb, vocally resplendent Abigaille.

Posted on October 6, 2017May 29, 2019 by tsaraslondon

Maria Callas Live

Most Callas fans have known of the existence of these live recordings for some times, and they have proliferated on many different labels over the years, with variable results. On the one hand there are companies like Divina Records and Ars Vocalis meticulously transferring these recordings in the best possible sound, and others with a more slapdash approach. Regrettably EMI generally adopted the latter approach, often just copying what were bad sources in the first place, in their attempt to cash in on the pirate market.

So how does the new Warner set measure up? I have yet to hear the whole set, but it would at least seem that they have adopted a more serious approach. Though they have not always found the best sources (there will often be more than one source tape for a single performance), they have at least done what they could with often intransigent sound. Though these transfers may ultimately not turn out to be the last word in Callas Live, at the price they are good value, and, with this release, Warner is at least making some amazing performances available to a wider audience. That said, the set should come with a warning for first timers that most of these recordings are not even up to the standard of reasonable mono studio recordings of the time. Perseverance is rewarded, though you do have to learn to listen through the sound, as it were. If you can , you will discover some truly remarkable singing.

In many ways this set gives a truer reflection of Callas’s stage career than the studio set, which includes operas she never sang on stage, as well as some that were only peripheral to her success. Of the operas represented here, twelve of them (Nabucco, Parsifal, I Vespri Siciliani, Armida, Macbeth, Alceste, La Vestale, Andrea Chenier, Anna Bolena, Ifigenia in Tauride, Il Pirata and Poliuto) were never recorded in the studio. Of these Andrea Chenier is an oddity. Callas sang the role of Maddalena only once at La Scala in 1955. She had been scheduled to sing Leonora in Il Trovatore, one of her greatest roles, but Del Monaco, who was to be the Manrico, suddenly professed himself not well enough to sing the role and offered Andrea Chenier instead! Maybe, as Callas didn’t know the role, he expected her to stand down, but, typically for her, she learned the role in a couple of days and was a very effective Maddalena. It’s very much the tenor’s opera though, and one wonders why she bothered. The production followed Visconti’s superb production of La Vestale, which opened the La Scala season, and she would go on to have spectacular successes at the house that same season in Visconti’s La Sonnambula and La Traviata and in a Zeffirelli production of Il Turco in Italia. The role of Maddalena hardly offered her the kind of challenge she was used to.

One might think Parsifal (sung in Italian as all Wagner was in Italy in those days) an oddity too, but we forget that Callas sang a good deal of Wagner in her early days. Aside from Kundry, she also sang Isolde and the Walküre Brünhilde, famously deputising for an ailing Margherita Carosio in I Puritani whilst still performing the role, a feat that dramatically changed the direction of her career. Her Kundry is much more than a curiosity, her singing sensuously beautiful as it should be, though the orchestra is muddily recorded in this 1950 broadcast.

I have a few gripes about some of the performances chosen. Rather than Covent Garden 1952, I’d have gone for the La Scala Norma of 1955, with Simionato and Del Monaco, arguably the greatest of all her recorded Normas, recorded on a night when her voice was responding to her every whim. For me it is the one where voice and art find their greatest equilibrium. It also sounds pretty good, at least in Divina Records’ transfer. For Medea I tend to turn to Florence 1953 or Dallas 1958, though it’s a close run thing, and for La Sonnambula I prefer the 1957 Cologne performance, which also enjoys better sound. The Lisbon Traviata is also a justly renowned performance, but Covent Garden from the same year is even better, and also in better sound.

I wonder about the inclusion of the Mexico Rigoletto, which is a bit of a mess of a performance, especially when the studio recording with Gobbi remains one of the greatest in the catalogue. Why not the 1957 La Scala Un Ballo in Maschera under Gavazzeni, which is a superb performance, in much better sound? On the other hand the inclusion of the Covent Garden Tosca, despite the existence of the classic De Sabata studio performance, is warranted by its fame and it being the last of her great successes.

Warner have also included BluRay discs of all the concert material, including the complete Act II of Tosca from Covent Garden, though I haven’t yet sampled these to find if they are any better than the DVD copies I already own.

Presentation is, mostly, exemplary, each opera enclosed in a hard cardboard gatefold sleeve, the cover graced with a photo from the production (though it should be noted that the photo on the cover of the Lisbon Traviata is actually from Covent Garden the same year). Inside the cover is a note on the recording itself, though Warner doesn’t go into much detail about sources or methods of transfer, the booklet that comes with each opera, restricts itself to a track listing, opera synopsis and essay on the opera in English, French, German and Italian.

The accompanying book would have benefited from a hard cover. I have a feeling its thin paper cover will become tattered in all too short a time. The book itself includes an essay on each performance and its history, and I was very pleased to see the name of the late John Steane amongst the contributors. However I regret the absence of a CD-Rom with libretti and translations, such as was offered with the Warner Studio set.

I intend to review each opera individually later in my blog, when I will discuss both sound and performance.

Posted on September 15, 2017May 29, 2019 by tsaraslondon · 2 Comments

Two very different theatre visits

So I’ve been to two very different shows in the last few days, and had two very different experiences. One was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Tim Rice’s 1970s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar ( a show I appeared in myself in the original production at the Palace Theatre in 1977-1978) at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, and the other Stephen Sondheim’s legendary, starrily cast Follies at the Royal National Theatre. I also had two very different experiences, as you might expect, but whereas one exceeded all expectations, the other turned out to be something of a disappointment.

I’ve loved both shows for years. I’d auditioned for JCS, whilst still at the Guildhall, but though the company were interested in me, I couldn’t at first take up an offer of a job because I didn’t have an Equity card (absolutely necessary in those days). I was lucky that they kept my details on file, because, while I was away in Hong Kong with Dougie Squires’ Second Generation, they got back in touch (via my mother) and repeated their offer. I was understandably thrilled to accept. Follies also has associations with my college days. Side by Side by Sondheim, with Julia McKenzie, Millicent Martin, David Kernan and Ned Sherrin was playing to packed houses at the Mermaid Theatre, where many of my fellow students worked as ushers. Most of us knew the show almost by heart, and it was this show that introduced London audiences to the music of Follies, although they had to wait till 1987 to see the whole show, at the Shaftesbury Theatre.

I’d have to admit that Superstar evokes so many emotional memories that it is hard for me to be objective. The introduction to Heaven on their minds hit me like a punch in the solar plexus, and I almost sobbed, so palpable was the recall of entering at the back of the stage behind Steve Alder’s Jesus. Thereafter, though, my emotional involvement faltered. The production came with huge praise and had won an Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival, so expectations were high. Unfortunately they were not fulfilled.

My first gripe was with the story telling. None of my companions had seen the show before and they were all having difficulty working out who was who. Only Caiaphas and the priests had any definite identity, and at the beginning it was difficult to work out who was Jesus, who Judas. They may have wanted to get away from cliche, but it helped that in the original production, Jesus wore his traditional white robe, meaning the audience knew immediately who he was. Pilate too was immediately identifiable from his long, purple Roman robe, and Mary wore a red dress, setting her in relief from the predominant browns and beiges of the rest of the cast.

Another reason storytelling got lost was that the production couldn’t decide whether it was a rock opera or a rock concert. However impressive it is that Jesus, Mary and Pilate can play the guitar, making them do so for their big solos somehow puts a barrier between them and the audience. Indeed it was only when Declan Bennett’s Jesus cast aside his guitar in Gethsemane that he, and we, began to feel any emotional engagement with his predicament. From that point until the end of the number, he was brilliantly effective and earned a terrific reception from the audience.

I also have a question about the use of crosses in the temple scene. Surely, as a Christian symbol, they would not have been in use then. It was also hard to understand that the crowd in the second part of that scene were a crowd of lepers craving to be healed.

For all its energy and vitality, I don’t think Timothy Sheader’s production ever got to grips with the drama, and, for that reason, it was a far less moving experience than the original production. Maybe it was more suited to today’s cynical agnosticism, but, though I’m not a believer myself, I feel sure that the ending of the piece, when the cacophony of Jesus’s crucifixion gives way to the serene major key of the strings playing the adagio theme from Gethsemane, is supposed to convey a sense of awe and hope. I felt none of those things on Saturday.

What a contrast with Dominic Cooke’s superb, thought provoking and profoundly moving production of Follies at the National Theatre.

This is a fragmentary piece, and the main story featuring the two couples Sally and Buddy, Phyllis and Ben, can often get lost amongst the subsidiary stories of all the other characters, who all get their star turns, all of them wonderfully performed here. I’m still here has been sung by a range of performers, including Barbra Streisand, but here, in Tracie Bennett’s stunning rendition, perhaps reaches its apogee. At first casually trading confidences with other guests, they gradually melt away as her confessions become more and more personal, resulting in a climax of incredible intensity. She rightly brought the house down.

It was one of several such moments. Dawn Hope also shone in a brilliant version of Who’s That Woman, ably supported by the other Weisman girls. One of the excellent conceits of the production is having the Weisman girls (and Buddy and Ben) continually shadowed by their younger selves. Here the older girls are joined by their younger selves in a fabulous tap routine that rivals anything you will see in 42nd Street. It is here also that Bill Deamer’s superb, discreetly apposite choreography is given full rein.

One should also mention Billy Boyle and Norma Atallah in Rain on the Roof, Geraldine Fiztgerald in Ah, Paris! and Di Bottcher’s Broadway baby. Also a word for Dame Josephine Barstow reminding us of both her and Heidi’s operatic past in One more kiss, her younger self beautifully shadowed by Alison Langer. But, however great these individual performances, none of them detracted from the main story of the two couples, which Sondheim and James Goldman interweaves with flashbacks to the lives of their younger selves, wonderfully played by Zizi Strallen, Alex Young, Adam Rhys-Charles and Fred Haig. As the story unravels, so do the protagonists, until, in the final Follies section, Ben breaks down completely.

I would love to say the fabulous Imelda Staunton stole the show, but, and I’m sure she would actually appreciate this, she was just one diamond amongst a stage of sparkling jewels. None of the performances stood out, because they were all equally amazing, all shockingly real. The songs, brilliantly acted as well as brilliantly sung, even the ones in the final Follies sequence (and this is where Sondheim is so clever) served to further their story and tell us more about the character. Singing became a natural form of expression when mere words could do no more.

Staunton presented a nervous, hyper-sensitive Sally, slightly unstable from the word go. A womanwho had spent her life tragically clinging onto a dream that never was. The wistful In Buddy’s eyes still revealed the heartache underneath, and when she sang the words “You said you loved me” in the torch song Losing my mind, you felt that this was a mantra she had been repeating to herself all her life. Peter Forbes’s Buddy was crumbling under the knowledge that he was always second best, and that seeking solace in the arms of another was not really what he wanted. His solos are sometimes over played for comic value, and I often find them a little tiresome. Here they revealed so much about Buddy’s character that I hung on every word. Janie Dee’s super elegant, wise cracking Phyllis turned out to be the solid lynchpin in her marriage to Philip Quast’s outwardly successful but inwardly tortured Ben. Could I leave you? was expectedly brilliant, but she also managed to pull off the difficult Story of Lucy and Jessie with a sassy elegance, in a routine that paid tribute to Rita Hayworth’s Gilda. Philip Quast, urbane and sophisticated gradually fell to pieces as the drink took its toll, and his ultimate breakdown in the final Live, Laugh, Love was almost unbearably, shatteringly moving. Ultimately, though one might have thought differently at the beginning, it was the Phyllis/Ben marriage that looked like a survivor. Maybe Phyllis, the strongest character of the lot, just needed to be needed, and as Ben curled up in her arms, equilibrium was restored. On the other hand one wondered how, or even if, Sally and Buddy would be able to pick up the pieces of their shattered marriage afterwards.

Miss it at your peril, this is the greatest production of Follies I’ve ever seen, actually one of the greatest productions of anything I’ve ever seen.

Posted on June 13, 2017March 29, 2020 by tsaraslondon · 6 Comments

Callas in Anna Bolena- La Scala, Milan April 14 1957

This live recording captures a great moment in operatic history, a moment when bel canto opera was finally taken seriously. As Montserrat Caballé once stated,

She opened a new door for us, for all the singers in the world, a door that had been closed. Behind it was sleeping not only great music but great ideas of interpretation. She has given us the chance, those who follow her, to do things that were hardly possible before her.

Sutherland, Caballé, Sills, Gencer, Scotto, even today’s DiDonato and Radvanovsky should all give thanks to Callas, for without this one production, their careers might have taken very different paths. True, Callas had by this time made people re-evaluate operas such as Lucia di Lammermoor and La Sonnambula, and she had had an enormous personal success as Rossini’s Armida in Florence in 1952, but it was La Scala’s spectacular production of this one opera, Anna Bolena which paved the way for the bel canto revival, and for the next few decades, long forgotten operas by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini would be revived all over the world.

Such was the anticipation and excitement surrounding the production that it was covered in the international press, the UK’s Opera Magazine dedicating seven pages of its June 1957 issue to Desmond Shawe Taylor’s review.

There is no doubt that La Scala wanted to make a splash, and there is ample photographic evidence of Nicola Benois’ stunning sets, and the superb costumes. It was also the apogee of Callas’s collaboration with Visconti, though unfortunately, after the production of Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride, which followed they never worked together again. Visconti recalls.

It was rather beautiful, if I do say so myself. But not sublime as everyone else has said. It had atmosphere. Benois and I used only black, white and grey – like the grey of London – for the sets. The castle interiors, such as the broad staircase down which Callas made her entrance, were filled with enormous portraits. The colours of the costumes – Jane Seymour, the king’s new love, wore red, for example, and the guards scarlet and yellow – played off these sombre sets. But for Anna Bolena, you need more than sets and costumes. You need Callas. Each day I went with her to the tailor to watch over every detail of her gowns, which were in all shades and nuances of blue. Her jewels were huge. They had to be to go with everything about her – her eyes, head features, her stature. And believe me, onstage, Callas had stature.

The opera was heavily cut, so if you are looking for some ur-text version, you would have to go to studio recordings featuring Sutherland, Sills, Souliotis or Gruberova, but you would be missing out on the greatest Anna on disc, who, according to Richard Fairman in Opera on Record III, “alone, of latter-day artists, has the power to grasp the emotional crux of every line and put it across.”

First off I should mention that this Divina Records transfer is in a different world of clarity from the murky EMI version, which unfortunately is also the source for the recent Warner transfer. Available as a download, I recommend it unreservedly.

Callas’s conception of the character of Anna is absolutely right from the word go. When asked by Rescigno, who conducted her in several concert performances of the final scene, why she phrased something in a certain way, she replied simply, “Because she is a Queen,” and it is this simple statement of fact that informs and shapes her portrayal. Callas’s Anna, though she suffers like any other woman, never forgets that she is a queen. In Callas’s own words.

Now history has its Anna Bolena, which is quite different from Donizetti’s. Donizetti made her a sublime woman, a victim of circumstance, nearly a heroine. I couldn’t bother with history’s story; it really ruined my insight. I had to go by the music, by the libretto. The music itself justifies it, so the main thing is not the libretto, though I give enormous attention to the words. I try to find truth in the music.

Contemporary reviews (and photographs) attest to the nobility of Callas’s bearing, and her first entrance vocally reflects that. Her first words have a natural authority and regal reserve, which gives way to deep private melancholy in the aria Come innocente giovane, which she sings in a gentle, perfectly focused half voice, her command of line and legato as usual superb. In the cabaletta, which is addressed to the court, she uses more voice, but the voice remains supple and she never loses for a moment that sense of regal composure.

In the following scene, where she unexpectedly meets Percy for the first time, she publicly retains her composure, though the conflicting emotions running through her heart are exposed in the many asides, and she starts the ensemble Io seniti sulla mia mano in a movingly intimate tone of infinite sadness.

These first scenes have introduced us to the character of Anna, regal, melancholy, troubled and noble, but the next scene is the one that will seal her fate and the one in which Anna will show her mettle. Alternately tender, then anxious, then truly terrified with Percy (who, it has to be said, behaves like a lovesick schoolboy throughout the opera), she is found in compromising circumstances by Enrico. Overcome with emotion she faints, but wakes to plead in melting tones her innocence in the superb ensemble In quegli sguardi impresso. Deaf to her pleas, Enrico asserts that the judges will decide her fate, and this is where Callas’s Anna really rises to her full stature, bringing to bear her queenly outrage in the words Giudice ad Anna! Guidice ad Anna! Ad Anna! Guidice! before launching the final stretta with an intensity that has to be heard to be believed. Singing with all the force at her command, she caps the ensemble with a free and secure high D, held ringingly for several bars.

The first scene of Act II (or Act III in this performance) contains the magnificent duet for Anna and Giovanna, prototype for so many of those female voice duets that pepper the operas of Donizetti and Bellini. In it Giovanna confesses her guilt, is at first repulsed by Anna, and then magnanimously forgiven. No doubt Bellini had this duet in mind when he penned the first duet for Norma and Adalgisa in Norma. Simionato, superb throughout the opera, is a worthy foil here, but Callas again transcends the music. Her interjections into Giovanna’s confession run the gamut of emotions from shock and revulsion to resignation and acceptance, until, in one of the most moving moments in the opera, she forgives Giovanna in a voice quivering with emotion. Always notable is the way Callas achieves her effects without once disturbing the musical line. She recognises that in bel canto opera it is the arc of the melody which carries the emotional impact, her sense of line and rubato always instinctively right.

The final scene in the tower is one she programmed into recitals on several occasions and recorded (in its entirety) for EMI on what is arguably her most successful recital disc Mad Scenes. Many have since recorded it, so it has become relatively familiar, but one should remember that it was practically unknown at the time of this performance. In Al dolce guidami Callas’s voice takes on an unearthly, eerie beauty, the music seeming to emerge from the very depths of her soul. Though closely adhering to the score, she sounds almost as if she is extemporising on the spot, and the audience listens in rapt silence, hanging on her every note, until it erupts in a corporate outpouring of applause and cheers at its quiet close. Her delivery of the recitatives in the scene is again a lesson in how to weight and measure the proportions of each line. The final Coppia iniqua is sung with massive force, the famous rising set of trills, either ignored or sketchily sung by others, sung with both accuracy and intensity, her voice rising with power to the top Cs. This is Callas at her best.

She is ably, and brilliantly, supported by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, who gives her ample rein to play with the music in the quiet, reflective moments and urges the ensemble to absolutely thrilling heights in the big finales. Rossi-Lemeni’s Enrico is authoritative but woolly-toned and Raimondi’s Percy pleasingly Italianate without being particularly individual. Simionato, inspired to give of her very best, is the only other singer who comes close to Callas’s achievement, singing with glorious tone and dramatic involvement, but even she is less specific, more generalised, in her responses than Callas.

Anyone who has any interest in bel canto opera has to hear this set, which puts you in the stalls on one of the greatest nights in Callas’s career. At the end of his review Desmond Shawe-Taylor, asked if Anna Bolena could enter the international repertory.

With Callas, yes; without her, or some comparable soprano of whom as yet there is no sign, no. Many people think it a flaw in these old operas that they depend on the availability of great singer; but what would be the fate of the standard violin and piano concertos if there were scarcely a player who could get his fingers round the notes, let alone fill them with a lulling charm or a passionate intensity?

Well, eventually other sopranos did take it on, with varying degrees of success, and the opera is still performed occasionally today, but none of these other sopranos has quite matched the genius of Maria Callas, who was, without any doubt, not only a great singer and actress, but also one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.

Posted on June 7, 2017August 16, 2021 by tsaraslondon · 3 Comments

Callas’s First Medea – Florence 1953

Having discussed Callas’s live Macbeth from La Scala a few posts ago, I thought I would start reviewing some of the many live Callas performances that exist. I do not propose to go into which are the best versions of these live recordings, as it can be quite a minefield, but I would just mention that, in any cases where they are available, Divina Records will be your best bet. In September Warner will be issuing a deluxe box set of many of Callas’s live performances, and, until it is, we will not know what the sound will be like. If they just re-hash the EMI versions, which should be avoided, by the way, then the news is not quite as exciting as it might have been. It remains to be seen.

This Medea was recorded in house from a single microphone at the front of the stage, which means that voices can disappear when at the back. However I found this Ars Vocalis transfer from Cetra LPs not at all bad, and so intense is the performance that it draws you in and the ear readily adjusts.

Unbelievably, considering Callas’s total mastery of the role’s difficulties, this was the first time she ever sang Medea. So successful was her assumption that La Scala ditched plans to stage Scarlatti’s Mitridate Eupatore with her later that year and replaced it with Cherubini’s Medea. Subsequently the opera was revived for her in productions at La Scala (twice), in Venice, Rome, Dallas, London and at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus in Greece. So much associated was she with the role, that when she came to make her non singing cinematic debut, it was in the role of Medea in the movie directed by Pasolini.

Cherubini’s Medée is actually a French language opéra comique with spoken dialogue, and was much admired by Beethoven and Schubert. It premiered in Paris in 1797, the first performance in Italian translation being given in Vienna in 1802. In 1855 Franz Lachner prepared a German version, for which he wrote his own recitatives. This Lachner version was first performed, in an Italian translation by Carlo Zangarini, in 1909, and it is essentially this version which Callas sang, though each of the conductors she performed the work with (Gui, Bernstein, Santini, Serafin, Rescigno and Schippers) prepared their own version of the work, making different cuts in the score. Apart from the studio recording with Serafin, we can hear live performances from Florence with Gui, La Scala with Bernstein, Dallas and London with Rescigno and La Scala again with Schippers.

Gui’s view of the work is essentially Classical, closest in conception to Serafin, who was to conduct the studio recording, though more propulsive in the work’s many exciting climaxes. His cuts are less extensive than the other conductors’, and this is the only time we get to hear Medea’s last scene complete. However, there are times where some judicious snipping might have helped. He leaves in the orchestral bars before Medea’s final Pieta in her aria Dei tuoi figli, which makes the ending of the aria anticlimactic, and leaves the audience uncertain when to applaud. Still, I prefer this to Bernstein’s solution of cutting the final Pieta as well. All the others cut just the orchestral bars, which seems to me the better solution. There are also times, particularly in the scenes before Medea’s first entrance, where Gui’s speeds are just too slow. The overture is dramatic and exciting, but the long first scene which sets the idyllic atmosphere that Medea bursts into, drags on interminably. There are times later on too, notably the duet between Medea and Creon, where his speeds are on the slow side, but the ends of each act and the finale itself are absolutely thrilling.

Callas herself is in superb voice, the top rock solid and gleaming, managing the treacherous demands of the role (it was said that Mme Scio, its creator, died singing it) with consummate ease. She sings with a wide range of colour, though her conception of the role is a deal more subtle by the time she sings it in Dallas in 1958. No complaints about her entrance, though, which is sheer brilliance, the veiled sound of her middle voice carrying with it a threat of menace which gives way to beguilingly feminine pleading in her first aria Dei tuoi figli. The aria itself is magnificently sung, its wide leaps and high tessitura expertly managed, and it provokes a spontaneous burst of applause from the audience, unfortunately cut short when they realise the aria isn’t quite over.

In the ensuing duet with Giasone I feel she slightly overplays her hand, and this scene is not as effective as it was to become in later performances. Nor does the duet with Creon have quite the subtle play of light and shade it will have on the studio recording and in Dallas, but the final scene is mind blowingly, blazingly terrifying, her voice cutting through the orchestra with coruscating force, and there is a great deal to be gained from hearing this scene in its entirety. Gui, too, supports her brilliantly at this point. Not surprisingly the audience go wild.

Barbieri is a superb Neris, Gui making of her aria, that still, calm centre of the score, a beautiful duet between voice and cello, which Gui substitutes for the more usual bassoon. Guichandut, an Argentinian tenor I’ve never heard of before or since, is good, but no match for Vickers, who would sing the role with Callas in all productions from 1958 onwards. Gabriela Tucci is a lovely Glauce, though she is a little taxed by Gui’s slow tempo in the ensemble before Medea’s entrance and gets a slittle shireky in the upper reaches. Mario Petri is perfectly acceptable as Creon, but the great moments are all with Callas. That she is so much associated with the role (even in this hybrid version of the score, which misrepresents what Cherubini actually wrote) is hardly surprising, for no other singer, before or since has made Cherubini’s score live and breathe as she has done. There have been occasional revivals, both of the Lachner version Callas sang, and the original opera comique, but none have caught the imagination the way that Callas’s performances did, and it seems likely that the opera is again to become the museum piece it once was.

Posted on April 28, 2017October 26, 2023 by tsaraslondon · 8 Comments

Callas’s Lady Macbeth

UPDATED NOVEMBER 2017

As I reviewed this performance only recently, I thought I would just re-post with a word or two about the sound of the Warner edition.

Thankfully, Warner seem not to have used the awful EMI version, itself a clone of another release. EMI failed to notice that the version they used had spliced into the Act I finale a few bars of a performance with Gencer, done to cover what was thought a loss of tranmission. This new version, and the Myto detailed below, has found the missing bars and included them, though the sound here is more muffled than elsewhere in the ensemble. Comparing Warner to Myto, I eventually came down in favour of Warner, which sounds a little cleaner to me, though there is not a great deal in it. I haven’t heard the Ars Vocalis version, so can’t comment on it. The main thing to take into account is that both Warner and Myto are a substantial improvement on EMI, which was practically unlistenable.

*****

One of the yawning gaps in EMI’s catalogue of Callas recordings has always been a studio recording of Macbeth with Callas and Gobbi as the murderous pair. With Di Stefano as Macduff and Zaccaria as Banquo and Serafin, or even Karajan, at the helm, EMI would no doubt have had a winner, but Walter Legge deemed the opera not popular enough and so Callas got to record Mimi, Manon and Nedda instead, roles which she was never to sing on stage, but no doubt seemed more commercially viable. It is also easy to forget that back in the 1950s, Macbeth didn’t have the same high regard it has now. Ultimately, all Callas got to record of the role were Lady Macbeth’s three great solos for her Verdi Heroines recital of 1958. Nevertheless, so successful are her interpretations that they have become the standard for all Lady Macbeths who followed, and Callas has become indelibly associated with the role, though in fact these La Scala performances were the only occasion she ever sang it.

This performance, which opened the 1952 La Scala season, was certainly a starry affair. It was directed by Carl Ebert, with designs by Nicola Benois, and conducted by Victor De Sabata, and though the rest of the cast were hardly in Callas’s class (who was?) they are all a good deal better than adequate.

As can be heard in Myto’s most recent transfer of the performance, much clearer than any I have heard before (and a good deal better than EMI’s shoddy presentation), De Sabata has a terrific grip on the score, his conception symphonically conceived, and the La Scala orchestra play brilliantly for him, his tempi, with one glaring exception, which I will come to shortly, judiciously chosen. We are vouchsafed all of the ballet music, which is brilliantly played.

Mascherini’s Macbeth has been criticised for being a relatively muted presence, and he’s certainly no Gobbi, but I think his performance works in context. Macbeth, after all, is a weak character. It is Lady Macbeth who drives the narrative, both in Shakespeare and in Verdi. Sure, Mascherini is not particularly imaginative in his phrasing, but he makes an excellent foil to Callas in the duets, which she dominates, as she should.

The opera belongs to the protagonists and both tenor and bass roles are relatively minor. Whilst Penno as Macduff and Tajo as Banquo are not in the first rank, neither of them is bad, and both are much better than adequate.

But, certainly in this performance, the opera belongs to Lady Macbeth and Callas is astonishing. So complete is her mastery of the role’s complexities, that one would have thought that she had been singing it for years, whereas this was in fact the first time she was singing it in public. She doesn’t get off to the greatest of starts, with her peculiar voicing of the spoken letter before her first recitative, but once she launches into Ambizioso spirto, she never misses a trick. Her voice was in prime condition at the time, securely gleaming on high, dark and richly powerful down below. No other Lady Macbeth has so acutely observed Verdi’s meticulous markings; no other Lady Macbeth has sung with such power and force, and yet with such a range of colour and expression; no other Lady Macbeth has executed the fiendishly difficult fioriture with such uncanny accuracy. This is the stuff of genius, no doubt about it, and anyone who has ever doubted Callas’s pre-eminence in the field should listen to the performance, preferably with score in hand.

As usual with Callas, she is apt to make her mark in a line, a word of recitative, as in one of the big set pieces, and her portrayal, full of incidental details, is all of a piece. Amongst the many revelations, I would mention the way she sings Vergogna, Signor after Macbeth has broken down before the ghost of Banquo in the banquet scene. The peculiar inflection she gives it, somehow suggests the deep love that exists between the couple, for without it, how does one explain why Macbeth is so much in thrall to his wife.

When Callas came to record Lady Macbeth’s three big scenes for her Verdi Heroines recital disc, her voice had lost some of the power and security on top, and consequently, good though they are, both Vieni t’affretta and La luce langue reach their fullest expression in the live La Scala version. However I do have a problem with the very fast speed De Sabata adopts for the Sleepwalking Scene. At so fast a tempo, Callas is less able to make her points, and it has always seemed to me something of a miscalculation. By the end of the scene, he has slowed down a bit, so maybe he thought so too, and we don’t know what happened in subsequent performances.

By contrast, the version on the recital disc is one of the greatest examples on disc of Callas’s deep psychological penetration into the psyche of a character. In interview she retells how she had felt in pretty good voice on the day of the recording, and emerged from the studio feeling quite pleased with herself. However , she was a little taken aback when Legge said she would have to do it again. Once she listened to the playback, though, she knew exactly what he meant. She had done a great piece of singing, but had not done her job as an interpreter. She then goes into a detailed analysis of the scene, of Lady Macbeth’s fluctuating thoughts, her fractured mental state, and how this should be expressed through the voice. Though much of Callas’s art was instinctive, there was evidently much also that was intellectual.

Callas only sang Lady Macbeth for one series of performances, at La Scala in 1952, but her achievement in the role has never been bettered, and it is a great shame that the role did not remain part of her active repertoire.

Posted on April 18, 2017October 17, 2021 by tsaraslondon · 2 Comments

Verdi’s Un Giorno di Regno – 2 recordings

The reason I ended up with two recordings of Verdi’s early, unsuccessful comedy, is that one day I was browsing in Gramex in Lower Marsh, Waterloo – a haven for those of us still attached to CDs. Amongst the stash of CDs I was buying that day was the RCA recording of Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani, which led Roger, the owner to ask me if I was a Verdi fan. I answered that indeed I was, whereupon Roger thrust the Simonetto recording of Un Giorno di Regno at me, telling me I must have it. I said that I already had the Philips recording, but he insisted that I took it away and wouldn’t accept any payment.

Verdi’s second opera was not a success at its premiere at La Scala, though five years later (as Il Finto Stanislao) it was something of a triumph at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice, a theatre with a strong tradition in comedy and opera buffa.

Whilst not according it the same merit as Donizetti’s great comedy L’Elisir d’Amore, which was clearly Verdi’s model, it is brim full of lively tunes and very enjoyable in its own right. It may never become a repertory opera, but it is definitely worth the occasional revival.

The Philips recording is of course in excellent 1970s stereo sound, has the Ambrosian Singers and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in splendid form under the experienced hand of Lamberto Gardelli, and a starry cast, and I must say I was very happy with it, but, after hearing the Simonetto, it now all sounds a bit dull and heavy, and the women at least are, I think, miscast.

Cossotto, a dramatic mezzo, doesn’t sound in the least bit comfortable with the light soprano role of the Marchesa. She tries to lighten her tone and style, but she doesn’t have the charm and clear voiced mastery of Lina Pagliughi, who is pure delight on the Cetra. Jessye Norman, who sings the mezzo role of Giovanna, also sounds a mite too heavy, and, though a soprano, her voice too sounds heavier than Laura Cozzi on the Cetra. The two buffo roles, sung here by Vincenzo Sardinero and Wladimiro Ganzarolli are also a trifle heavy handed when set beside the experienced buffos Sesto Bruscantini and Christiano Dalamangas on the Cetra. Renato Capecchi also sounds more naturally right as Belfiore than Ingvar Wixell.

The one role I prefer on the Philips is that of Edoardo, sung by the young Jose Carreras with honeyed tone and youthful charm, not that he totally eclipses Juan Oncina on the Cetra, but his tone is definitely more ingratiating.

Simonetto conducts with a sure sense of Italian opera buffa style, and the whole set comes to life in a way that the Philips doesn’t quite. The Cetra is a totally joyful experience , fizzing and popping like a good prosecco. His orchestra and chorus, the Orchestra Lirica e Coro di Milano della RAI, may not be as accomplished as their British counterparts, but they play with enthusiasm and dash at Simonetto’s more jaunty tempi.

Admittedly there are cuts, and the Cetra plays about 10 minutes shorter than the Gardelli. Well, this isn’t Falstaff, and losing a few notes doesn’t bother me that much, so I would have no hesitation in granting the palm to the 1951 Simonetto recording, despite ancient sound.