[TR24][OF] Maria Callas - The First Recital [1949] (Richard Wagner, Vincenzo Bellini) - 2014 (Classical, Opera)

Callas: the first studio recordings
These remarkable recordings of three very different arias, made over three days in November 1949, present very nearly the first documented examples of the voice and art of Maria Callas – preceded only by a few surviving excerpts from her appearances at the Teatro Colón earlier the same year. It is not surprising that her singing on these recordings astonished listeners then; what truly amazes is that it still does, 65 years on.
When Callas made these, her first commercial records, she was a 25-year-old dramatic soprano who had made her Italian debut as Gioconda, following that role with Isolde, Turandot, Leonora in La forza del destino, Aida and Norma – almost always under the guidance of her mentor, Tullio Serafin, who taught her the role of Norma. Aware of Callas’s bel canto style and agility, learned in her student days in Greece with retired coloratura Elvira de Hidalgo, Serafin did not hesitate to insist the young soprano take over the role of Elvira in I puritani when lyric coloratura Margherita Carosio became indisposed. Never mind the fact that Callas was singing Brünnhilde in Die Walküre at the time! The revelation of a dramatic soprano d’agilità restoring Puritani to its place as music drama, while easily managing the inherently florid music, began a bel canto revolution the impact of which is still felt today.
Callas’s voice was a recalcitrant instrument, at that time thoroughly trained but not thoroughly tamed. Tone poured out in cascading waves, almost too freely, and the sound was not conventionally beautiful. Yet, in these recordings, there is not only an arresting artistic personality, but also a dazzling command of florid music – all manner of runs, diatonic and chromatic scales, and a full-throated E flat in alt that is thrilling beyond words. But it is never virtuosity for its own sake – all of it is enormously expressive. Expressivity permeates every note, word, phrase of all three arias, Callas’s plangent tone and superhuman legato serving the Bellini and also the Wagner – after all, Wagner worshipped Bellini’s long-lined melodies. In all three arias, Callas achieves an uncanny dual effect – characters that are dreamlike yet very human, singing that is imperfect, yet beyond perfection.

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Recorded: 8–10.XI.1949, Auditorium RAI, Turin
Newly remastered from the original 78 rpm discs at Abbey Road Studios
Original sound recordings made by Fonit Cetra SpA. A Warner Music Group Company