GREAT RECORDINGS phase 14

LYRIC & COLORATURA ARIAS
by Boito, Catalani, Cherubini, Cilea, Delibes
Giordano, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Spontini & Verdi
Maria Callas
Philharmonia & La Scala Orchestras/Tullio Serafin

4 76842 2
(Angel: 4 76843 2)
Recorded 1954 & 1955
Mono/ADD
71 minutes

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‘A highly desirable conflation of one and a half LPs on one generously filled CD, which allows us to hear Callas’s unique voice and art with even greater faithfulness. Serafin gives admirable support throughout.’ (Gramophone)

Maria Callas was born in New York in 1923 to Greek immigrant parents. In 1937, her mother returned to Greece, and took her two daughters with her in the hope that she could give them the musical education she could not afford in America. Callas began to sing professionally in Athens in 1941, but her international career did not start until 1947. Less than twenty years later that career was effectively over. The intensive period during which she recorded her repertoire for EMI was even shorter: 1953 to 1964, with one recital record made in 1969. But that legacy of recordings is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished and treasurable in the history of the gramophone.

In late 1951, Callas created a sensation when she opened the season at the Scala opera house in Milan in I vespri siciliani. By July 1952, EMI had successfully negotiated an exclusive contract with the singer and Walter Legge was able to plan the series of recordings of Italian operas (made with Callas and the forces of La Scala) that would start in March 1953 with I puritani. By September 1954 a further six operas (including the legendary Tosca) had been recorded and Callas herself was in London to record her first two solo albums: Puccini Arias (currently available in EMI’s Great Artists series) and the LP featured on this CD reissue.

Lyric and Coloratura Arias is a collection of items of contrasting musical styles intended to showcase Callas’s vocal agility as well as her dramatic power. The programme of extracts from eight 19th-century Italian operas is in two parts: five arias from a number of verismo works followed by four from the coloratura repertoire. In the opening items Callas exhibits her unique ability to find the exact vocal colour and precise dramatic weight for each of the different characters and in the later tracks she tackles the showpieces with brilliant ease. Also included on this CD are extracts from two other slightly earlier Italian operas (La vestale and Medea), recorded at La Scala in 1955, when studio time became available following the postponement of the recording of La bohème.