GREAT RECORDINGS phase 13

VERDI: Il Trovatore
Maria Callas, Rolando Panerai,
Fedora Barbieri, Giuseppe di Stefano
Nicola Zaccaria, Renato Ercolani, Luisa Villa & Giulio Mauri
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano
Herbert von Karajan

5 62898 2
(Angel: 5 62901 2) (2CDs)

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'Callas and Karajan took the world by the ears in the 1950s with this recording of Il Trovatore. Leonora was one of Callas's finest stage roles and this recording is wonderfully intense. Karajan, the perfect choice as conductor, brings that almost insolent mastery of score and orchestra which made him such a phenomenon at this period in his career.' (Gramophone)

Award: Diapason d'Or, France

This famous recording of one of the most popular of all Verdi operas was made in the La Scala Theatre in Milan in April 1956. It brings together the great Maria Callas in one of her finest roles (the ill-fated Leonora) and a conductor, Herbert von Karajan, perfectly chosen by the producer Walter Legge to realise Verdi's compelling and intense score.

Furthermore, Legge was able to cast the other principal roles from strength: the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, Callas's regular operatic partner, as Manrico, the 'troubadour' of the title, Fedora Barbieri as the gypsy Azucena and Rolando Panerai as the Count of Luna, Manrico's rival in love and war.

If the recording inevitably occupies a prized place in the discography of Maria Callas, one of the finest dramatic sopranos of the 20th century, it is also to be treasured as yet another of the supreme achievements on record of its conductor, Herbert von Karajan.