Posted on by tsaraslondon

Callas’s Studio Medea gets the Pristine XR treatment

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Pristine, having applied their XR method of remastering to many of Callas’s mono recordings and to some of her live ones, now turn to the stereo studio ones. Oddly enough, this was the first of Callas’s complete operas to be recorded in stereo in Milan, though it wasn’t actually recorded by Walter Legge and her Columbia recording team, and all her other Milan recordings that year were mono. Apparently, EMI had no interest in the enterprise and the recording was made by Mercury for Ricordi in September 1957, a few weeks after her performances of La Sonnambula in Edinburgh, when she had not been in her best voice. It was originally issued by Ricordi in Italy, Mercury in the US and Columbia in the UK and since then has appeared on various different labels, including Everest and even Deutsche Gramophon, as well, of course, as Warner when they re-mastered all the Callas studio recordings for their 2014 release.

Considering it was recorded by Mercury, one would have expected the sound to be pretty good, but it has always sounded a bit dry and constricted. I was listening to the Pristine CDs and made comparisons with the 2014 Warner release. To my ears, the differences between the two are fairly slight. Pristine’s XR sound opens up the sound picture a bit and solo voices in particular do sound as if they have a bit more air around them. I also tried listening both through my speakers and through headphones and, oddly, found I preferred the Pristine through my headphones and the Warner through my speakers, though this could have something to do with my equipment. It might also have something to do with the fact that the Pristine release is transferred at a much lower level than the Warner.

Whichever version you go for, there is no doubt this is the best sounding of all Callas’s recorded Medeas, but what about the performance? Apart from this studio recording, we have five live recordings: Florence and La Scala 1953, Dallas 1958, London 1959 and La Scala 1961. Of these, one can safely discount the 1961 La Scala performance. I would also discount the 1959 London performance, a recording that has also been issued by Pristine, though I see that it is Ralph Moore’s first choice in his Medea survey. I feel that it pales in comparison to the Dallas performance, which, though it suffers from poor sound, is blisteringly dramatic, having been recorded just after Bing had “sacked” Callas from the Met. That event seems to have galvanised the whole company to produce a performance of extraordinary dramatic concentration, with Callas in fabulous, secure voice. This Dallas performance is my first choice for the opera, though I wouldn’t want to be without the two 1953 performances either.

This studio recording operates on an altogether lower level of intensity than any of those. However, when I first got to know this opera, and this recording, I had no other point of reference, and it seemed pretty good to me. It was only later, when I heard those barnstorming performances from Florence, La Scala and Dallas, that I found anything lacking, and it is only in comparison with herself that she fails. She is still a good deal better in the part than any other who attempted it, certainly a lot better than Gwyneth Jones and Sylvia Sass, who also made studio recordings of this Italian version. In other hands, Cherubini’s music can seem staid and formulaic, but Callas breathes life into it like no other.

Serafin’s conception is essentially Classical, but his conducting varies from the somnolent to the dramatic. After a tautly conceived overture, the first scene up to Medea’s entrance drags on interminably. I understand the necessity to establish a pastoral air of peace and calm, into which the Colchian Medea bursts, but, quite frankly, at this pace it just becomes a bore. On LP I often used to miss out the first side completely and set the needle down part way through the second LP, when Medea makes her entrance.

Without foreknowledge of other performances by Callas, this is still a great performance of a difficult role. We lose some of the power and ferocity, but there are gains too. Ricordi il giorni tu la prima volta quando m’hai veduta? is couched in the most melting tones, as is the ensuing aria. There is no doubt that it is love, not revenge, that first brings Medea to Corinth. Her duplicity in the scene with Creon, and also in the following duet with Jason, is brilliantly charted, and the scene with the children movingly intense. Vocally, for all that she is not in her best voice, she manages its angular lines and wide leaps with consummate skill, her legato still wondrously intact. Note also how, in this Classical role, her use of portamento is more sparing.

When it comes to the supporting cast, Scotto is less of an advantage than you might expect, Pirazzini rather more (though not quite a match for Barbieri in Florence and at La Scala or Berganza in Dallas). Picchi, who sang Pollione to Callas’s Norma in London in 1952, is rather good, though Vickers is even better in Dallas. Modesti makes a good Creon too, though not as good as Zaccaria in Dallas.

One should of course point out that this is not Médée, as Cherubini imagined it, which was an opéra-comique with spoken dialogue. The version Callas sang is a hybrid, an Italian translation of a German version with recitatives by Franz Lachner, first performed in 1909. It works very well, though, and it is interesting to note that, even in this age of preference for historical authenticity, this was the version that Sondra Radvanovsky sang when the opera was revived for her at the Metropolitan Opera recently.

If you are looking for a studio recording of the opera, then there is little doubt that this is the one to go for.

Cherubini: Medea (Pristine Audio)

Posted on by tsaraslondon · 4 Comments

Callas sings Norma at Covent Garden 1952

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This recording captures Callas’s debut before one of her most loyal audiences. She returned the following Coronation season, reprising the role of Norma and adding Aida and Leonora in Il Trovatore. She was back for Norma in 1957, then La Traviata in 1958,  Medea in 1959, and finally the legendary Zeffirelli production of Tosca in 1964 and 1965, her last ever performance on stage.

Callas sang Norma more than any other role, and is particularly associated with it and there are quite a few extant recordings of her singing it.. Aside from the studio recordings of 1954 and 1960, we have live performances from Mexico in 1950, Covent Garden in 1952, Trieste in 1953, Rome and La Scala 1955, Rome in 1958 (the infamous walk out), and also of her final performances in the role in Paris in 1965.

Though this Covent Garden performance is very good, I would have preferred it if Warner had chosen the La Scala performance of 1955 with Simionato and Del Monaco, a performance in which art and voice find their truest equilibrium, and without doubt the greatest performance of the opera I have ever heard. In its Divina incarnation it is also, apart from some radio interference during the opening of Act II, in much clearer sound than this Covent Garden performance. It is the recording  I turn to most often when I want to hear Norma.

That said, it is a long time since I heard this 1952 set, and I certainly enjoyed listening to it. The sound is not too bad, but not great, and a bit boomy in places, though the solo voices come across reasonably well. The chorus sound a bit muffled. I don’t have any other version I can compare it to though, so can’t tell you if it’s any worse or better than others.

To deal with elements other than Callas first, Vittorio Gui has an excellent grasp of the score, and has the merit of not conducting it as if it were Verdi. His tempi are, for the most part, judicially chosen, and he supports his singers admirably, though very occasionally I felt he hurried things along a little too much.  There are one or two lapses between stage and pit, but, in general, the performance is well prepared and executed.

Giacomo Vaghi is a sonorous, firm voiced Oroveso, and Mirto Picchi, who sings Giasone on Callas’s studio recording of Medea a welcome surprise as Pollione. He doesn’t have Del Monaco’s or Corelli’s heroic sound, nor their clarion top Cs, but he is a good deal more stylish than Mario Filippeschi, the Pollione of Callas’s 1954 studio recording.

The Adalgisa is Ebe Stignani, one of the most acclaimed mezzos of her age, who was much praised at the time. She has a voice that is seamless from top to bottom, firm and beautifully produced, but she was twenty years Callas’s senior, and to my ears at least, doesn’t sound in the least the giovinetta Norma refers to. We should remember that, though Adalgisa takes the lower line in the duets, the role was originally created by the soprano Giulia Grisi, who, by all accounts, had a lighter voice than Giuditta Pasta, who created the role of Norma. Also, though reasonably flexible, she doesn’t execute the florid music with quite Callas’s accuracy. In the duets (both sung down a tone) it is only when Callas sings that you can hear when Bellini separates descending scales into duplets. Stignani also ducks some of her high notes. The downward transpositions were presumably made to accommodate her, as they are not used when Simionato plays Adalgisa to Callas’s Norma. Apparently it used to annoy Callas that critics never noticed that Simionato sang them in the right keys.

Clotilde is sung by a young Joan Sutherland, and it is interesting to hear what she had to say about what it was like to appear alongside Callas in these performances.

[Hearing Callas in Norma in 1952] was a shock, a wonderful shock. You just got shivers up and down the spine. It was a bigger sound in those earlier performances, before she lost weight … It was thrilling. I don’t think that anyone who heard Callas after 1955 really heard the Callas voice.

Callas’s voice does indeed sound huge in these performances (“colossal” Sutherland referred to it elsewhere), but, maybe because of that, her Norma here is more the warrior, whereas at La Scala 1955, her singing is more subtle, with more of the woman emerging. What is remarkable is how this large voice gets round the notes, the fastest of coloratura passages holding no terrors for her whatsoever. The top of the voice is also absolutely solid and the top D that ends Act I, held ringingly and freely for several bars, is an absolute stunner.

Her Norma here is vocally stunning, her voice flashing out in anger with scalpel-like attack in the Act I finale, powerful and commanding in her public scenes with the Druids, but in 1955 at La Scala she is infinitely more moving in the private scenes and in the finale. Furthermore in 1955 her voice still had power and security at the top.

This Covent Garden performance is a great memento of her London debut, but it is still the 1955 La Scala performance I will listen to most often. The cast (Simionato, Del Monaco and Zaccaria) is just about as good as you could get at the time. Votto, who conducts, is not Gui’s equal, but he does at least understand the score and knows how to support his singers. I’d say it’s one of those rare occasions in the opera house where everything went right.