Maria Callas, Vien, diletto, è in ciel la luna

Maria Callas, Vien,diletto è in ciel la luna Vicenzo Bellini I Puritani

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Maria Callas
• Vien
• diletto
• è in ciel la luna

[bltmz23]

Greatest of all! Smashing! Brilliant!

Others should learn how to do things on stage and in opera! Everything is perfect - voice, pronunciation, technique, coloraturas, phrases, acting....

That`s why she IS the one and only!

[stingabe]

now this is Callas at the top of her game.

[violinovoce]

@ghostofyeats She did indeed continue to lose weight. In a photo where she shakes Harry S. Truman's hand in 1959, she looks like a concentration camp survivor. It seems fairly straightforward to equate loss of body mass to loss of voice--which also probably led to premature menopause in late 1957. The '55 Scala Traviata is a great artistic achievement. No one would deny that even as her physical means were depleted, she matured as an artist. Yet: e.g., Macbeth 1952; Medea '53.

[ghostofyeats]

@violinovoce Thanks for the reply. Callas continued to lose weight after 1955, and it was this weight loss that really jeopardized the voice, particularly by 1958. I prefer her 1955 Scala Violetta to all her other Violettas. I think she somewhat oversings in parts of the earlier Traviatas (interpolated Ebs at all). It is true, however, that her 1951-1952 accounts of "sempre libera" are totally unmatched.

[violinovoce]

@ghostofyeats Most weight was lost from August 1953 to mid 1954. Giulini, who conducted Vestale, had not seen her for a while and when she came out of the stage door--in mid 1954 *before* Vestale rehearsals began--he *did not recognize her!* He said that "she was a different person." As such, she could *act* certain roles, but her "fat" Violettas" are musically far superior; vocally, the diet eventually ruined her. Her artistry would have gotten greater as she matured, fat or thin.

[ghostofyeats]

@violinovoce Not meaning to split hairs, but Callas lost weight over 2 years and the exact cause of her vocal decline is still unclear. Some say her physical transformation was invaluable for bringing extra artistry to some roles (Violetta, Amina), but that's probably not accurate; this 1953 excerpt has a quality of magic that the 1949, though amazing and vocally even more astonishing, doesn't have. (And, as you say, she was still fat -- though she'd already begun losing weight.)

[jock100000]

that just about blew me out of my shoes .......still the yardstick for all other sopranos to measure themselves against .....

[operalover67]

dramatically,,,



[operalover67]

@violinovoce it's deamatically true...what you're saying...I mean...

[violinovoce]

Perfect, if cut. The photos all show the thin Callas, not the heavy one who produced this super-human perfection.It was recorded in early 1953. Beginning in mid 1953, Callas decided to lose 80 pounds in a year and her voice was changed forever, and finally destroyed. This recording is some of the best evidence of why she set the music world on fire. The thin Callas of a year later would not have done so if no one had first heard the heavy one.

[pointemeout]

@MariaCallasLegend

thanks darlin