Callas à Paris - More Arias from French Opera - Callas Remastered Maria Callas

• 1 Iphigénie en Tauride (Guillard) - Ô malheureuse Iphigénie! (Act II) 04:33
• 2 La damnation de Faust, Op. 24: D'amour l'ardente flamme (Marguerite) 08:15
• 3 Les Pêcheurs de perles (Cormon & Carré) - Me voilà seule...Comme autrefois (Act II) 06:02
• 4 Manon, Act 2: Je ne suis que faiblesse....Adieu, notre petite table (Manon) 03:23
• 5 Massenet: Manon, Act 3: Suis-je gentille ainsi? ... Je marche sur tous les chemins (Manon) 02:52
• 6 Werther, Act 3: Werther! Qui m'aurait dit la place... Des cris joyeux (Charlotte - Air des lettres) 07:06
• 7 Faust, Act 3: Il était un Roi de Thulé...Les grands seigneurs...Ah! je ris 11:36
• Total Runtime 43:47

Info for Callas à Paris - More Arias from French Opera - Callas Remastered

As in her first Callas à Paris recital, recorded two years previously, the diva performs arias of diverse weight, colour and mood – from the darker tones of Berlioz’s Marguerite to the brilliant ‘Jewel Song’ of Gounod’s Marguerite, and from the mezzo-ish melancholy of Massenet’s Charlotte to the soprano coquetry of the same composer’s Manon. ‘Simply as an artist,’ wrote Gramophone in its review of the recital, ‘in her sense of line, her feeling for a word, her command of colour and her mastery of the whole complex art of interpretation – [Callas] is so far ahead of all other contemporary singers, and of all but the greatest past singers, too, that she almost spoils us for the rest.’

Maria Callas, soprano
Orchestre De La Société Des Concerts Du Conservatoire
Georges Prêtre, conductor

Digitally remastered

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.

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