Maria Callas. Ocean! thou mighty monster. Oberon. Weber.

Philharmonia Orchestra.
Dir. Antonio Tonini.
1962

Category:

Music

Tags:

• oberon
• weber
• maria
• callas

[TheIpazia1]

La voce non è quella dei primi anni ma io adoro questa incisione

[RamirRMA]

No idea she sang it! xD AMAZING!

[gustopheles]

@kgarmaker123 I'm glad I read your comment - I was wondering why her her vibrato at the high note (7:48 mark) was so wide when she'd sung much tighter D-flats later in career.

[65attila]

@kgarmaker123

This is poor unsteady, hooty  singiing pure and simple.

[kgarmaker123]

@sillyboydeux That breath thing was the result of being dehyrdrated.. In the rash of the new Callas books, it is clear she was abusing diruetics and laxatives in an attempt to stay thin for Onassis.. Probably also led to her cardiac collapse and death in 1977. in 1965 she was so thin.. that she looked sick. Has a horrible effect on the vocal cords too. in 1964( much heavier) She sang quite a bit better, and.. if accounts are correct her Paris Normas in that year were solid.

[sillyboydeux]

@kgarmaker123 Amen. Well, that period adds to the myth and shortchanges her legacy somewhat; traditionally an artist at that age is at the "top of their prime" about age 38, 39. She had to stop a few times in the Paris Normas because she ran out of breath. It caused a riot in the galleries, but she finished. And when the "Guerra" top C came up, she stopped the conductor and repeated it, which is sort of tacky. Onassis over opera? Oh well, there are the Juilliard tapes—an ample compensation.

[kgarmaker123]

@sillyboydeux Yes indeed.. and what was wrong with Callas voice in 1962 could have been fixed, quite easily, had she gone to a proper teacher, or even back to De Hildago.. and had it fixed. MOst of what was wrong, is that she had quit singing.. and adopted a fairly flamboyant, public lifestyle, repleat with lots of alchohol( horrible for the voice) smoking, and late nights. Not to mention a dysfunctional relationship.

[sillyboydeux]

This woman is a living prism, 33 years after her death. By that I mean, upon relistening, this time I hear the two top notes as perfectly on pitch, but "high on the string" like Itzak Perlman and Josef Szigeti used to do. The tempo she creates at the end, sounding more like "allegro con fuoco", is unprecedented in vocal recording I think. This is a masterpiece of vocal art, regardless of the high-note controversy.

[sillyboydeux]

@kgarmaker123 You are so right. Lady Gaga has, by contrast, a "pixellated" voice, completely produced by electronic horseshit effects. She's the biggest asshole in music, in my humble, Catholic schoolboy opinion.

[sillyboydeux]

@vocalpianist haha. She was very funny about her use of "English". When asked upon her return in 1954 to the U.S. for her Chicago Opera début in Lucia, "Which is your favorite language to speak, Madame Callas?" "Well," she replied, in that whiny mezzo-soprano speaking voice with a hint of New York in it, "I count in English!"