Verdi - La traviata
£13.25
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Label: Warner
Cat No: 9029584448
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 2
Genre: Opera
Release Date: 15th September 2017
Contents
Artists
Maria Callas (soprano)Alfredo Kraus
Mario Sereni
Laura Zannini
Conductor
Franco GhioneWorks
La TraviataArtists
Maria Callas (soprano)Alfredo Kraus
Mario Sereni
Laura Zannini
Conductor
Franco GhioneAbout
Maria Callas sang La traviata more frequently than any other opera, apart from Norma. She performed it over 60 times between 1951 and 1958, most famously in Luchino Visconti’s production at La Scala in 1955/56. Her only studio recording of the role was made in 1953, but by the time she performed it in Lisbon in 1958, she had become still closer to the character; the critic John Steane wrote that the final act of her interpretation at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos is “the culmination of the great singing actress’s art”. Callas’s Alfredo is a tenor renowned for his elegance and sensitivity, Alfredo Kraus and his father is sung by the Italian baritone Mario Sereni, long a mainstay of the Metropolitan Opera. Later in 1958, in Dallas, Callas gave her last-ever performance of Violetta.
Recorded 27 March 1958, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisboa
Maria Callas was born to a Greek family in New York in 1923. Her vocal training took place in Athens, where her teacher was the coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who had sung with Enrico Caruso and Feodor Chaliapin. After early performances in Greece, Callas’ international career was launched in 1947 when she performed the title role in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda at the Arena di Verona in Italy.
Her voice defied simple classification and her artistic range was extraordinary. In her early twenties she sang such heavy dramatic roles as Gioconda, Turandot, Brünnhilde and Isolde, but over the course of her career her most famous roles came to be: Bellini’s Norma and Amina (La sonnambula); Verdi’s Violetta (La traviata); Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena, Cherubini’s Medea and Puccini’s Tosca. Though her timbre was not always conventionally beautiful, Callas’s musicianship and phrasing were in a class of their own. She brought characters to vivid life with her skill in colouring her tone and making insightful use of the text. She is credited with changing the history of opera: by placing a perhaps unprecedented emphasis on musical integrity and dramatic truth, and by transforming perceptions – and reviving the fortunes – of the bel canto repertoire, particularly Bellini and Donizetti.
The 1950s marked the height of Callas’s career. Its base lay in the opera houses of Italy, and she became the prima donna assoluta of Milan’s legendary La Scala – notably in the productions of Luchino Visconti – but her operatic appearances also encompassed London’s Royal Opera House, the New York Metropolitan Opera, Paris Opéra, the Vienna State Opera, and the opera houses of Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Lisbon, and, in the early 1950s, Mexico City, São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro.
From 1959, when she started a life-changing love affair with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, her performing career slowed down and her voice became more fragile. Her final stage performances came in 1965, when she was only 42. There were many plans for a return to the stage – and for further complete recordings – but they never reached fruition, though in 1974 she gave a series of concerts in Europe, North America and Japan with the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano; he had partnered her frequently in the opera house and in the studio, not least in the 1953 La Scala Tosca under Victor de Sabata, considered a landmark in recording history. Callas died alone in her Paris apartment in September 1977.
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