PUCCINI / BELLINI / ROSSINI
Maria Callas: Toujours - Paris 1958 BLU-RAY Maria Callas (soprano) / Orchestra & Chorus of the Paris National Opera [ Warner Classics Blu-ray / Blu-ray Disc - released 20/Nov/2015 ] This Blu-ray disc is part of a collection of three that gather together concert and stage performances from the latter phase of Callas's career, 1958-1964. These are the only professional video recordings of Callas in performance on stage. |
PUCCINI / BELLINI / ROSSINI / BIZET / VERDI / BELLINI / etc
Maria Callas: In Concert London, Hamburg & Paris BLU-RAY Maria Callas (soprano) / Orchestra & Chorus of the Paris National Opera, Symphonieorchester des NDR, Orchestra & Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Cove [ Warner Classics Blu-ray / 3 Blu-ray Disc - released 25/Sep/2017 ] Callas at Covent Garden (London 1962 & 1964) Callas in Concert (Hamburg 1959 & 1962) Toujours (Paris 1958) |
PUCCINI / BIZET / VERDI
Maria Callas at Covent Garden: London 1962 & 1964 Maria Callas (soprano) / Orchestra & Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden [ Warner Classics Blu-ray / Blu-ray Disc - released 20/Nov/2015 ] This Blu-ray disc is part of a collection of three that gather together concert and stage performances from the latter phase of Callas's career, 1958-1964. These are the only professional video recordings of Callas in performance on stage. |
SPONTINI / ROSSINI / BELLINI / BIZET / VERDI / GOUNOD
Maria Callas in Concert: Hamberg 1959 & 1962 Maria Callas (soprano) / Symphonieorchester des NDR [ Warner Classics Blu-ray / Blu-ray Disc - released 20/Nov/2015 ] This Blu-ray disc is part of a collection of three that gather together concert and stage performances from the latter phase of Callas's career, 1958-1964. These are the only professional video recordings of Callas in performance on stage. |
BELLINI / PUCCINI / VERDI / etc.
Very Best of Maria Callas: 14 Classic Arias Maria Callas (soprano) [ ALTO / CD - released 10/Feb/2014 ] |
GIOACHINO ROSSINI
Rossini: Armida (complete opera recorded live in 1952) Maria Callas, Francesco Albanese, Mario Filippeschi / Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Tullio Serafin [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Live Remastered / 2 CD - released 1/Feb/2019 ] Rossini is a pillar of bel canto opera, but he was less central to Callas's art and career than Bellini and Donizetti. She performed two of his comic works - Il barbiere di Siviglia and Il turco in Italia - and in 1952, with her mentor Tullio Serafin... |
LUIGI CHERUBINI
Cherubini: Medea (complete opera recorded live in 1953) Gino Penno, Maria Callas, Maria Luisa Nache, Fedora Barbieri, Giuseppe Modesti, Enrico Campi / Teatro alla Scala, Leonard Bernstein [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Live Remastered / 2 CD - released 1/Feb/2019 ] The character of Medea became closely associated with Maria Callas. In 1969, several years after she had left the opera stage, she even played the betrayed and finally infanticidal sorceress in a film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. |
VERDI
Aida [recorded live in 1953] Maria Callas, Kurt Baum, Giulietta Simionato, Jess Walters / Covent Garden Opera Chorus & Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli [ Testament / 2 CD - released 1/Jan/2009 ] "it was in many ways a performance that outshines all [Callas's] studio recordings, with the stage atmosphere well caught. Barbirolli too is a winningly warm and sympathetic Verdian" (Penguin) |
GIUSEPPE VERDI
Verdi: Rigoletto (complete opera recorded live in 1952) Maria Callas, Piero Campolonghi, Giuseppe di Stefano / Orquesta del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Umberto Mugnai [ Urania / 2 CD - released 1/Feb/2019 ] Callas only sang Gilda in Rigoletto twice on stage, in Mexico City in 1952, and this recording was taken from the first of those performances. She brought tonal substance and deep interpretative insight to a role that had sometimes been treated by... |
GASPARE SPONTINI
Spontini: La Vestale (complete opera remastered recorded live 1954) Maria Callas, Franco Corelli, Ebe Stignani, Nicola Rossi-Lemeni / Teatro alla Scala, Antonino Votto [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Live Remastered / 2 CD - released 1/Feb/2019 ] The central character in La Vestale, as in Norma, is a priestess who transgresses her holy vows for love. Spontini's nobly-conceived opera, composed for Paris in the Napoleonic era, brought Callas' first collaboration on a new production with the... |
GIUSEPPE VERDI
Verdi: Aida (Complete Opera recorded live Mexico, 1951) Maria Callas, Mario del Del Monaco, Oralia Dominguez / Fabritiis [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Live Remastered / 2 CD - released 1/Feb/2019 ] Aida held an important place in the earlier years of Callas's career, and in 1950 it brought her debut at La Scala, Milan, the theatre where she soon became reigning diva. That same year, she sang the role of the Ethiopian princess in Mexico City,... |
RUGGERO LEONCAVALLO
Leoncavallo: I Pagliacci (Complete opera recorded in 1954) Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Tito Gobbi, Rolando Panerai / Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala Milan, Tullio Serafin [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Remastered / CD - released 10/Nov/2014 ] While Pagliacci's regular companion piece, Cavalleria rusticana, figured prominently in Callas's early career, Leoncavallo's one-acter had no place in her stage repertoire. But as Gramophone wrote of this recording: 'When Callas [as Nedda] and Gobbi... |
GAETANO DONIZETTI
Donizetti: Lucia Di Lammermoor (complete opera recorded in 1955) Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano, Rolando Panerai, Nicola Zaccaria / [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Live Remastered / 2 CD - released 1/Sep/2018 ] Lucia di Lammermoor - like La sonnambula - had become associated with light-voiced sopranos, so when Callas took on the title role in the early 1950s she proved revelatory with her combination of visceral power, technical refinement and... |
VINCENZO BELLINI
Bellini: Il Pirata (complete opera remastered recorded live 1959) Maria Callas, Pier Miranda Ferraro, Costantino Ego, Chester Watson, Glade Peterson / American Opera Society, Nicola Rescigno [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Live Remastered / 2 CD - released 1/Feb/2019 ] The titular character of Bellini's Il pirata is the tenor, Gualtiero, but it is the soprano, Imogene, who leaves the most powerful impression, thanks above all to her lengthy and dramatic closing scena. Il pirata had fallen into obscurity before it... |
VINCENZO BELLINI
Bellini: Norma (complete opera recorded in 1960) Maria Callas, Christa Ludwig, Franco Corelli, Nicola Zaccaria / Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala Milan, Tullio Serafin [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Remastered / 3 CD - released 18/Nov/2014 ] Callas first sang Bellini's Norma in 1948, when she was just 25. She went on to perform the role of the heroic, but vulnerable Druid priestess - the ultimate embodiment of bel canto - more frequently than any other. In this second studio recording... |
CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK
Gluck: Alceste (complete opera recorded live in 1954) Maria Callas, Enrico Campi, Giuseppe Zampieri, Paolo Silveri / [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Live Remastered / 2 CD - released 1/Feb/2019 ] Alceste, in 1954, was the first of two Gluck operas that Callas sang at La Scala, followed three years later by an Italian version of Iphigénie en Tauride. It was in the 1953-54 season that she rose to become 'Queen of La Scala', also singing Medea.... |
GIUSEPPE VERDI
Verdi: La Traviata (complete opera recorded live in 1958) Maria Callas, Alfredo Kraus, Mario Sereni, Laura Zannini, Maria Cristina de Castro / Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisboa Franco Ghione [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Live Remastered / 2 CD - released 1/Feb/2019 ] 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... |
GAETANO DONIZETTI
Donizetti: Lucia Di Lammermoor (complete opera recorded in 1959) Maria Callas, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Piero Cappuccilli, Bernard Ladysz / Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, Tullio Serafin [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Remastered / 2 CD - released 18/Nov/2014 ] In the six years that had passed since 1953, and her first recording of Lucia di Lammermoor, Callas's voice had maybe become less robust, but her singing had become still more perceptive. As Gramophone said: 'Mme Callas has refined her interpretation... |
RICHARD WAGNER
Wagner: Parsifal (complete opera recorded live in 1950) Maria Callas, Rolando Panarai, Boris Christoff, Africo Baldelli / RAI Roma, Vittorio Gui [ Warner Classics Maria Callas Live Remastered / 3 CD - released 1/Feb/2019 ] In her early years as a dramatic soprano, Callas sang three Wagner roles: Isolde, Brünnhilde (Die Walküre) and Kundry in Parsifal. |
GIOACHINO ROSSINI
Rossini: Il Turco In Italia (complete opera recorded in 1954) Maria Callas, Nicola Rossi-Lemen, Nicolai Gedda / Milan La Scala Orchestra; Philharmonia Orchestra [ Naxos Historical / 2 CD - released 2/Jan/2006 ] Callas's Fiorilla is the tenth complete opera recording she made, the only one for EMI [Columbia/Angel] that she undertook of a then unknown work, and which she would later sing at La Scala, Milan. |