GREAT RECORDINGS phase 12

DONIZETTI: LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR
Maria Callas, Giuseppe
di Stefano
Tito Gobbi, Raffaele Arié,
Valiano Natali
Anna Maria Canali & Gino Sarri
Coro e Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Tullio Serafin

5 62747 2 (2CDs)

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'Callas's Lucia is a great performance of the part and, especially in the Mad Scene, we hear some of the finest singing of our time. Credit is also due to Tullio Serafin for his admirable direction of the opera and to the engineers for the excellent recording.' (Gramophone)

The series of complete operas recorded for EMI by the great Maria Callas (23 in all) ended in 1964. It began 11 years earlier with this recording of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, which brought together for the first time in the studio a team that was and would remain close to Callas: the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, the baritone Tito Gobbi and the conductor Tullio Serafin.

The recording, described by John Ardoin in his Callas Legacy as 'a glory of the LP era', was made in 1953 in Florence, where Callas had already triumphed at the Maggio Musicale festivals of the two previous years. As John Steane puts it: 'It was the May of her career: the voice fresh, the spirit eager and the art maturing steadily to its summer.'

Donizetti's opera, famous for its vocally and dramatically taxing central role, is based on the novel by Walter Scott, which tells of the tragic consequences of a family feud that prevents Lucia from marrying her lover Edgardo.