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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.
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