Maria Callas, Orch del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Tullio Serafin – Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana (1953/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:59 minutes | 650 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Playing Santuzza in a student production of Cavalleria rusticana in Athens in April 1939 was the very first time that Maria Callas, then aged 15, appeared in a leading role in a complete opera, albeit a short one. Her performance went well, both vocally and histrionically, despite the fact that she was suffering from toothache, and her shortsightedness on stage proved to be a problem that needed to be overcome, both then and throughout her career. She later sang Santuzza professionally with the Greek National Opera Company in 1944. After her sensational triumph in I puritani in Venice in 1949 she embarked on a glittering international career and became established as the leading star of La Scala, Milan, which became her artistic home throughout the 1950s. It was with the forces of La Scala that she would go on to make a series of opera recordings that remain unsurpassed to this day, beginning with I puritani in March 1953. Her next recording at La Scala was to be Tosca in August, but before then a recording of Cavalleria rusticana was being made in June at La Scala with a distinguished mezzo-soprano as Santuzza. Despite the fact that this singer was appearing in the role successfully in live performances around that time, she spectacularly failed to hit the top note at the recording sessions, even after repeated tries. The mezzo was given a period of rest and the sessions were postponed until early August, but just before they were about to resume she announced that she was ill and was dropped completely from the project. In a desperate attempt to save the situation, Callas was asked to step in and, despite pressing engagements elsewhere, she agreed. After two days’ rehearsal with Maestro Serafin, she ran through the performance in fine style and the recording now takes its rightful place in the Callas catalogue. –TONY LOCANTRO, 2014
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Maria Callas, Orchestra del Teatro della Scala di Milano, Tullio Serafin – Bellini: I Puritani (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:22:04 minutes | 1,35 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Maria Callas was born on December 2, 1923, in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, the second daughter of Greek immigrants George Kalogeropoulos (1881-1972) and Elmina Evangelia Dimitriadou (1894-1982) of Meligalas. Their older brother Vassilios had died of typhoid fever in Greece. The parents had been living in the United States for six months at that time. The father changed the family name to Callas in 1929 after opening a low-earning pharmacy in the Greek section of Manhattan in 1927. In 1937, after the separation of her parents, Maria went to Athens with mother Evangelia and sister Yakynthy (Jackie). She made her first public appearance in Cavalleria rusticana in Athens in November 1938, while still studying at the Athens Conservatory with Maria Trivella. From the beginning of 1938 she studied singing with Elvira de Hidalgo, also at the Athens Conservatory. In August 1942 she sang the role of Tosca for the first time at the National Opera of Athens, and in April 1944 she took on the role of Marta in Tiefland for the first time. In the Greek premiere of Fidelio at the Herod Atticus Theater on August 14, 1944, she took the title role. In 1949 she married the Italian entrepreneur Giovanni Battista Meneghini and took Italian citizenship.
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Giuseppe Di Stefano, Maria Callas, Orchestre du Mai Musical Florentin , Tullio Serafin – Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:50:24 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Maria Callas’ first rendition of Lucia on record is an iconic album in several respects: it marks the official beginning of her collaboration with EMI, provides the first example of the legendary alchemy occurring between her and her favorite male partners Tito Gobbi and Giuseppe Di Stefano, and is still nowadays considered the best version of Donizetti’s masterpiece on the vocal front. Callas’ unique impersonation of the tragic heroine culminates in a hair-rising mad scene, never being equaled!
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Maria Callas – The New Sound of Maria Callas (Remastered) (2003/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:33:48 minutes | 3,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Renaissance of a voice: Maria Callas – Unforgettable arias sung by the most iconic diva of all time – remastered for the first time in high-definition sound from the original tapes, for an unprecedented sound quality that shines new light on the voice of Maria Callas. Allan Ramsay, remastering engineer at Abbey Road Studios: “With high definition, you’ll be able to experience sounds which have only been heard so far by people who were either present at Callas’s recording sessions, or who had access to the unique master tape … All we wanted to do is remove the specks of dust, as it were, and wipe the glass clean.”
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Maria Callas – The Callas Rarities (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:56:48 minutes | 2,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
The first two tracks heard here are tests made for the producer Walter Legge to get the feeling of working with Maria Callas in a studio and to find good microphone placings in an acoustically difficult venue for recording Lucia di Lammermoor immediately afterwards. In the mono version of the Sleepwalking Scene from Macbeth one hears the character moving off into the distance as instructed in the score, unlike the stereo take where the voice remains centre stage.
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Maria Callas – Pure – Maria Callas (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:53 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
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.
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Maria Callas – Maria Callas – Live & Alive (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:12:05 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
The passion and charisma of Maria Callas, performing live on the stages of the world’s greatest opera houses and concert halls, can now be experienced as never before – thanks to new audio remastering from the best available sources. These are performances that played a crucial part in creating the legend of Callas, La Divina, and which keep her thrilling art very much alive.
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Maria Callas – Callas – Mad Scenes from Anna Bolena, Hamlet & Il pirata – Callas Remastered (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:30 minutes | 945 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Callas had already triumphed at La Scala with Anna Bolena and Il pirata (the first real success of Bellini’s early career) in 1958. She wanted to record both works complete, but the producer Walter Legge was not convinced that either was marketable and persuaded the soprano to settle for their final scenes – which he believed to contain the essence of both pieces. Callas followed his judgement. ‘We are the only two people who know what bel canto is,’ she was to tell Legge years later when attempting to persuade him to share the platform at her Juilliard masterclasses. Posthumously she was to get her wish when EMI took into its catalogue a live broadcast of each opera from La Scala.
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Maria Callas – 1958 – La Grande nuit de l’opéra (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:26 minutes | 1005 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Diggers Factory
The gala evening at the Paris Opera on 19 December 1958 was announced in the press as ‘the greatest show in the world’. Maria Callas, at the height of her fame, performed for the first time in front of a Parisian audience. The diva presented all facets of her art with the Italian classics she loved and with her own theatrical genius. Paris gave her a triumphant evening! The original recording of this evening, which was broadcast throughout Europe as part of Eurovision, has been restored with the utmost care.
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Maria Callas – Giordano: Andrea Chénier (1955 – Milan) – Callas Live Remastered (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:49:56 minutes | 766 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
While Puccini’s Tosca became closely identified with Callas, she appeared only rarely in other post-Verdi operas once she had risen to fame. She learned the role of Maddalena in Andrea Chénier at short notice for a production at La Scala: Verdi’s Il trovatore had been planned, but the star tenor Mario del Monaco engineered a change to Giordano’s red-blooded drama of the French revolution. This recording captures the thrill of a first night at Italy’s most famous opera house, and Callas traces her character’s development – from a spoiled young aristocrat to a self-sacrificing woman in love – in gripping and moving detail.
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Maria Callas, Orchestra del Teatro della Scala di Milano, Antonino Votto – Puccini: La bohème (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:45:54 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Mimì, the happy-go-lucky young Parisian discovering the torments of love and facing the dread of illness and finitude is an endearing character, easy to identify with. If Maria Callas never had the opportunity to portray it live on stage, she masterfully embodied her on record in 1956. Mimì’s zest for life, simplicity and frailty have rarely been more intensely rendered than in this fiery version featuring a beautiful cast. Callas and Di Stefano’s love duet sends sparks flying!
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Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Tito Gobbi, Nicola Monti, Rolando Panerai, Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Tullio Serafin – Ruggero Leoncavallo: I Pagliacci (1954/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:49 minutes | 717 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
The role of Nedda in Leoncavallo’s verismo classic never entered Callas’s stage repertoire, and so her recording made with the forces of La Scala, Milan, between 12 and 17 June 1954 represents one of her explorations of an opera made purely within the confines of the studio, rather than developing over a period on the stage. But as in all such cases – this was the first time she recorded a role she had not previously sung – Callas’s desire to explore it to the fullest remains paramount. There is a complete identification between singer and character, down to the smallest detail, that make her Nedda an unusually complex creation that grows throughout the opera as she responds to its desperate emotional thrills and spills.
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Maria Callas, Orchestra del Teatro della Scala di Milano, Antonino Votto – Bellini: La sonnambula (1993/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:00:55 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Pure Amina is one of the most touching characters of the bel canto repertoire. The young somnambulist is completely unaware of her condition which loses her the love of her fiancé. Maria Callas was probably her most admirable performer, having won the heart of the Scala’s audience after a legendary series of performances staged by her close friend Luchino Visconti in 1955. Two years later, she would record this milestone studio recording – an absolute reference of Bellini’s discography – with Antonino Votto.
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Maria Callas – Verdi: La forza del destino (1997/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:45:32 minutes | 1,70 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Leonora, the passionate young girl choosing seclusion and life as a hermit to avoid the revenge of her brother and punish herself for her forbidden love with Alvaro and the death of her father, is one of the most tragic roles of the Verdian repertoire. It was also the first roles Maria Callas took up in her career. This recording with her mentor Tullio Serafin features an amazing cast and is one of the high points of the Verdi discography.
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Maria Callas – Puccini: Manon Lescaut (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:00:44 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Manon Lescaut, from the eponymous Puccini opera, is a difficult character to grasp, evolving from a naïve young girl to a venal and manipulative femme fatale, and finally a despaired woman weeping over her miserable end. Maria Callas never performed the role on stage but left this milestone recorded version in 1957, forming with Giuseppe Di Stefano (as Des Grieux) one of the most iconic couples of the whole Puccini discography.
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