Listening to Maria
Callas is not always comfortable; her
voice hardens under pressure and becomes
metallic and shrill. Sometimes her vibrato
becomes a wobble and she can also adopt
a throaty, almost guttural voice quality.
On the other hand her soft intense singing
is often breathlessly beautiful and
her identification with the role is
almost tangible. Callas never played
safe and that is, of course, the secret
behind her success. For more evenly
vocalised but also less penetrating
readings Tebaldi, from the same generation
and her most obvious rival, is a safer
proposition. She was never inexpressive,
quite the contrary, but she was more
generalized. On this disc we get both
the best - most of the time - and the
worst - occasionally - of Callas.
The greater part of
the disc is a transfer of an LP, recorded
concurrently with her Puccini recital
in London in September 1954. Most of
these roles she never sang on stage
but several of the arias appeared on
her concert repertoire. The first five
arias are from what we generally label
Italian verismo, i.e. operas
from around the turn of the last century
with the pretension to depict real life
events. This was also Tebaldi territory.
To compare the two divas is illuminating.
Tebaldi is simply glorious, regal even,
with big, beautiful rounded tone, pouring
out streams of 24-carat gold. It’s a
vibrant voice but every vibration is
perfectly controlled. Callas’s voice
was never so supple, so rounded and
had a tendency to spread. That said,
listening to the two arias from Adriana
Lecouvreur, one hears a marvellous
inwardness, expressed with a tone so
frail that one wonders if it will carry
her through the next phrase. But she
always does and the same goes for the
La Wally, Andrea Chenier and
Mefistofele arias. If these five
arias had been Callas’s total recorded
legacy she would still have been regarded
as one of the greatest singers ever.
Luckily so much more is preserved. She
was also a master of florid singing
and the remaining four arias are just
as superb, even though they are more
superficial emotionally. The Bell
Song from Lakmé shows
that even in a show-piece like this
she tries to invest the roulades with
some meaning. Rosina’s cavatina from
Il barbiere di Siviglia amply
demonstrates her talent for comedy.
Ombre légère from
Dinorah, another show-piece,
is as fine example as any of her technical
capacity. Again we note her ability
to adjust her timbre to match, in this
case, the flute in their duet. The effect
is that of two instruments played by
the same person. In this piece, incidentally,
there is some distortion in high-lying
passages, which I can’t remember from
my old LP pressing.
Of the four bonus tracks
the aria from Il Turco in Italia
comes from the complete recording she
made, also in 1954. That recording has
recently been reissued by Naxos and
that set also has the four coloratura
arias from this recital as fillers,
so readers who don’t want too many duplicates
should be warned. This role was one
of Callas’s greatest successes on stage
and her charming singing of the aria
shows why.
The remaining items
are all from a live broadcast in San
Remo and are a mixed blessing. At least
the big aria from Die Entführung
aus dem Serail shows that she was
no Mozart singer. The sound quality
may be partly to blame, since there
is an unattractive edge to both the
orchestra and to Callas’s voice that
makes it sound harder than ever. But
it is not just the sound; the whole
interpretation is hard-driven and forceful
and she seems out of sympathy with Konstanze.
This is a tragic aria and the heroine
is in deep distress and of course she
has to express anger; more than that
she is a warm and loving person and
warmth is a thing that is in very short
supply in this reading. That she was
capable of such feelings is shown in
the Louise aria, altogether warmer,
with more rounded tone and an inwardness
that is truly affecting. This seems
to be one of only two occasions when
Callas sang this aria, the other being
when she recorded it in a studio in
Paris in 1961. By then her voice had
lost some of its warmth and her vibrato
had loosened considerably. That one
is still a version to admire but this
live effort is something to love. The
last item, an aria from the little known
Armida, is again a display piece,
littered with trills and roulades superbly
executed. The applause comes even before
the piece is finished.
Any recording with
Callas is worth hearing, worth owning,
and this one is no exception. Especially
the five verismo arias and the one from
Louise (French verismo if you
like) show Callas at her very best.
Not the last word in sonics but enjoyable
anyway.
Göran Forsling
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Maria
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