I’ve never heard Maria Callas sing. But I did see her once. In 1971, as a student on my first visit to the US, I managed to get a seat at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for a gala performance of Verdi’s Don Carlo, with a rising young tenor named Plácido Domingo in the title role.
In the meantime, I wandered into the Met’s glitzy foyer. As I stood at the foot of the stairs leading to the main floor, I heard applause from higher up. The crowd parted and down the stairs came that utterly unmistakable woman, instantly recognizable to every opera fan, and to millions of others too.
Callas was on the arm of Rudolf Bing, the Met’s general manager, with whom she had had an epic feud in the 1950s and who was now entering his final season as an executive in New York. She passed me at the bottom of the stairs, almost close enough to touch. But like everyone else, I just applauded. I don’t remember much about the opera that night. But I will never forget Callas.
Six years later she died in her Paris apartment, aged just 53. Today, as we celebrate the centenary of Callas’s birth, she remains for many the nonpareil opera singer of the 20th century. She has the most interesting, exciting and most instantly recognizable voice of all operatic voices. Her unhappy life has nothing to do with this legacy, and of course there are many other great singers to consider, but Callas’ hold on history is justified. It owes everything to two things: first, to the exceptional vocal and dramatic standards she set and often fulfilled; and second, the good fortune that her career coincided with the explosion of the LP and the full-length recording of operas.
Few singers before or since have been given such an opportunity. As a result, Callas’s discography is very extensive, including several operas that she has recorded more than once, some that she has rescued from obscurity, as well as dozens of recordings (with variable sound quality) of live performances. As far as I know, there are no video recordings of Callas in a complete opera, but there are some notable excerpts worth tracking down.
Any selection of the kind that follows is personal and arbitrary, but here are my own five introductory recommendations.
La Traviata
In many ways, Violetta in La Traviata is the perfect Callas role. Her commitment to Verdi’s doomed heroine is invariably heartbreaking and always performed with total commitment. There are at least four Callas recordings of La Traviata, all very good in different ways. The one you need to have is probably the 1955 live recording at La Scala, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini. But also look for the valuable video clips from her live recording in Lisbon from 1958, which contain valuable moments.
Norma
One of Callas’ signature roles, even in her decline. The identification with the priestess Norma, always sung with great mastery, is so complete that it is often difficult to separate Bellini’s writing about its tragic central character from Callas’ portrayal of it. As is often the case with Callas, the 1952 Norma, recorded on her Covent Garden debut and conducted by Vittorio Gui, finds her at her best and sets the recorded benchmark (there is also a small role for Joan Sutherland, the defining Norma of Callas). a slightly later era). Callas can be seen singing Norma’s Casta Diva aria in the recently recolored and reissued video of her 1958 concert of Italian arias in Paris, conducted by Georges Prêtre.
Tosca
Puccini’s 1899 opera is the opera with which Callas is now most often associated. Part of this is due to the modern sentimentalization of Callas as the female operatic martyr, a bit like Floria Tosca herself. Much is due to the fact that there is a full video of her wonderful second act performance with Tito Gobbi’s peerless Scarpia from Covent Garden in 1958. Callas also recorded Tosca twice, and again it is the earlier studio version among the masterful led by Victor de Sabata, where she is at her best.
Lucia di Lammermoor
Donizetti’s betrayed and traumatized heroine, based on Walter Scott’s 1819 historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor, gave Italian opera some of its most perfect moments and Callas one of its finest roles. She made two studio recordings, but because of its visceral intensity and a direct connection to what is so special to her, it is the live Lucia under Herbert von Karajan in Berlin in 1956 that predominates. Purists will hate it for the cut, and the sound isn’t studio perfect, but Callas’ performance is poignant, sensitive and on another level.
Parsifal
Definitely a mistake? Callas singing Wagner? But yes, she did, and fascinatingly well, even if only in the early years of her career. At the time she had Brünnhilde in Die Walküre in her repertoire, as well as Isolde in Tristan und Isolde (of which a private tape of a performance in Genoa is said to have existed). In her first studio work in 1949, Callas recorded Isolde’s Liebestod in Italian. But the most important exhibition recorded by Callas-Wagner is her Kundry (again in Italian) in a complete recording of Parsifal conducted by Vittorio Gui of Rome in 1950. A performance of the very highest class, and an important reminder of her artistic range.
And as an encore, a small but somehow extremely moving Calla’s moment. She never sang the mezzo-soprano role of Eboli in Verdi’s Don Carlo on stage. In 1962, when the cameras were there to record her singing Eboli’s aria O don fatale – O fatal gift – during a concert in Hamburg, the ravages of her voice became increasingly apparent and the vibrato could spiral out of control. But what piercing intensity she brings, what dramatic mastery. This is infinitely more than an ordinary encore or a garden recital. You can sense somehow that she knows how flawed her greatness has become. But the enduring greatness is there nonetheless, in this thrilling glimpse of what we all still miss so much today.