Pure - Maria Callas Maria Callas

• 1 Bizet: Carmen, Act 1: L'amour est un oiseau rebelle (Carmen, Chorus) [Habanera] 04:29
• 2 Bellini: Norma, Act 1: Casta diva (Norma, Chorus) 05:40
• 3 Puccini: Gianni Schicchi, Act 1: O mio babbino caro (Lauretta) 02:38
• 4 Catalani: La Wally, Act 1: Ebben?...Ne andrò lontana (Wally) 04:55
• 5 Verdi: La traviata, Act 1: Ah fors'e lui (Violetta) 03:07
• 6 Verdi: La traviata, Act 1: Sempre libera (Violetta, Alfredo) 04:03
• 7 Puccini: Tosca, Act 2: Vissi d'arte (Tosca) 03:19
• 8 Puccini: Madama Butterfly, Act 2: Un bel di vedremo (Butterfly) 04:47
• 9 Giordano: Andrea Chénier, Act 3: La mamma morta (Maddalena) 04:56
• 10 Puccini: La bohéme, Act 3: Donde lieta uscì al tuo grido d'amore (Mimì) 03:26
• 11 Cilea: Adriana Lecouvreur, Act 1: Ecco: respiro appena...Io son l'umile ancella (Adriana Lecouvreur) 03:50
• 12 Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor, Act 3: Il dolce suono ... Ardon gli incensi (Lucia, Raimondo, Normanno, Chorus) 03:02
• 13 Verdi: Il trovatore, Act 4: D'amor sull'ali rosee (Leonora) 04:08
• 14 Verdi: Otello, Act 4: Ave Maria (Desdemona) 04:50
• 15 Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia, Act 1: Una voce poco fa (Rosina) 06:24
• 16 Gluck: Orphée et Eurydice, Act 4: J'ai perdu mon Eurydice (Orfeo) 04:29
• 17 Saint-Saëns: Samson et Dalila, Act 2: Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix (Dalila) 05:24
• 18 Bizet: Carmen, Act 2: Les tringles des sistres tintaient (Camen, Frasquita, Mercédès) 04:28
• Total Runtime 01:17:55

Info zu Pure - Maria Callas

One of the 20th century’s most legendary and enduring icons, Maria Callas was both a glamorous diva and a global superstar who captivated audiences worldwide with her vivid and passionate performances. This disc features Callas in a glittering selection of opera favourites that showcase her unique voice and her heart-breaking portrayal of tragic heroines.

Opera singers come and go, but just a few – the legends – live on. And Maria Callas was the greatest legend of them all, though not just for the wonder of her voice. She changed the way people thought about opera, but she also became famous as the glamorous celebrity who fell in love with Aristotle Onassis, leaving her elderly husband to live with him on his yacht Christina and enjoy the high life with the international jet set. Of course it ended badly. She lived her life like one of her own tragic heroines who (as women tend to do in opera) sing, suffer and die. And her own death came at just 53, after a dazzling but short career that took in heavy roles alongside decorative, nightingale-like ones – ignoring the established rules of vocal health and probably explaining why her voice finally gave out as it did. But in that time she did extraordinary things, using the muscle of those heavy heroines to empower the nightingales with strength and depth of feeling nobody had thought to offer them before. She gave them credibility as drama. Her performances were absolute and self-exposing: she held nothing back. And she was even tougher on herself than she could be on others – which is why her voice was never quite the flawless instrument singers are meant to cultivate. Her personality was far too volatile and too self-sacrificing in its love affair with risk. In the mythology of opera, though, that’s what the audience demands. We want the diva to be both a goddess and a slave: to give her life for art. We thrill to the dimension of that sacrifice. And Callas dutifully obliged.

Maria Callas, soprano
Nadine Sauterau, soprano
Jane Berbié, mezzo-soprano
Choeurs René Duclos
Orchestre du Théâtre National de l’Opéra de Paris
Georges Prêtre, conductor

Maria Callas
was born to a Greek family in New York in 1923. Her vocal training took place in Athens, where her teacher was the coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who had sung with Enrico Caruso and Feodor Chaliapin. After early performances in Greece, Callas’s international career was launched in 1947 when she performed the title role in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda at the Arena di Verona in Italy.

Her voice defied simple classification and her artistic range was extraordinary. In her early twenties she sang such heavy dramatic roles as Gioconda, Turandot, Brünnhilde and Isolde, but over the course of her career her most famous roles came to be: Bellini’s Norma and Amina (La sonnambula); Verdi’s Violetta (La traviata); Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena, Cherubini’s Medea and Puccini’s Tosca. Though her timbre was not always conventionally beautiful, Callas’s musicianship and phrasing were in a class of their own. She brought characters to vivid life with her skill in colouring her tone and making insightful use of the text.

She is credited with changing the history of opera: by placing a perhaps unprecedented emphasis on musical integrity and dramatic truth, and by transforming perceptions – and reviving the fortunes – of the bel canto repertoire, particularly Bellini and Donizetti.

The 1950s marked the height of Callas’s career. Its base lay in the opera houses of Italy, and she became the prima donna assoluta of Milan’s legendary La Scala – notably in the productions of Luchino Visconti – but her operatic appearances also encompassed London’s Royal Opera House, the New York Metropolitan Opera, Paris Opéra, the Vienna State Opera, and the opera houses of Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Lisbon, and, in the early 1950s, Mexico City, São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro.

From 1959, when she started a life-changing love affair with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, her performing career slowed down and her voice became more fragile. Her final stage performances came in 1965, when she was only 42.

There were many plans for a return to the stage – and for further complete recordings – but they never reached fruition, though in 1974 she gave a series of concerts in Europe, North America and Japan with the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano; he had partnered her frequently in the opera house and in the studio, not least in the 1953 La Scala Tosca under Victor de Sabata, considered a landmark in recording history. Callas died alone in her Paris apartment in September 1977.

Booklet für Pure - Maria Callas