Callas in 1950 as Fiorilla and Kundry

Two examples of Callas unique vocal availability and artistic versatility. Roma, 1950.
Rossini: Gianandrea Gavazzeni
Wagner: Vittorio Gui (Klingsor: Giuseppe Modesti)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Callas
• Rossini
• Wagner
• Turco+in+Italia
• Parsifal
• Kundry
• Meier
• Bartoli
• Mödl
• Ciofi

[foropera]

It was just like that in the fifties, you were singing in the country's language. Don Carlo in German was a classic until the 70s.

[primohomme]

Ridiculous for a limited voice. But Callas was an assoluta, a unique vocal fach that means someone who can alternate between high soprano and dramatic mezzo, sing poweful and dramatically, sing the most intricate coloratura both lirically and heroically with a range of at least low Bb to high Db.

[Frufrucucu]

Spectacular! I have never heard of any other singer taking on two such completely different roles in one career, let alone on the same year! I hope more of her Wagner operas will surface one day. That way we will have her great Isottas, Brünhildes, etc as well as Fidelio and so on. At least I know that her Isottas were filmed, so there's hope yet...

[hammer55292]

@mainah7910 You breath is a fart, like the rest of that KID-KILLER STATE OF MAINE!

[mainah7910]

@hammer55292 My farts make better notes than this shit

[NEBESHIKU]

Wgnaer and Rossini are now in heaven telling Callas, as she sits in the throne as the opera goddess, that this is how it had to be sung and what they wanted and that no one else was able to do so!

[hammer55292]

MARIA CALLAS- " The Greatest Soprano Of All Time ", the BBC, 2007.

[CNoeliaSoprano]

Magnífico!!! bueno...es María Callas....no es para menos...

[Matt75003]

She was a very good Kundry, but her Fiorilla was a unique achivement—especially in 1950, when the opera was largely forgotten and there was no reliable edition of the score. Here, she literally reinvents the part, adding a dazzling cadenza of which, sadly, there is no trace in the 1954 studio recording.

[sopranosd]

It's breaking my heart to hear the sweetness of tone, supported sound and ease of singing here, especially compared to the hard color, strangled sound and wobble in the upper register she developed. (although she did not lose her portamenti, coloratura and pitch) I think her weight loss affected her voice badly. It's so sad -- She was a disciplined a musician and wonderful actress, and somewhere along the way her technique got way off track, robbing her of years of good singing.

[MAPIAKALLAS]

she is so cute on kundry screaming i remember seeing one of her interviews and she say she hate it the screaming

[Shahrdad]

I'm looking at the two last photos on this video-posting, and she is a very beautiful woman in those pictures.  She's voluptuous and statuesque, but she's not what I would ever call "very fat" or "obese." In the last photo, she looks almost like a belly dancer. I don't think even at her fattest she weighed any more than 220lb, and she was thin compared to a lot of the singers on the stage now, or for that matter, compared to a lot of people on the streets in the USA.

[rhapsodyaaa]

huy que volumen distorciono el sonido