Maria Callas & Friends: The Legendary Duets

EMI Classics announces another release in its highly successful series of compilation albums devoted to the unique artistry of Maria Callas – The Legendary Duets. In these 2 CDs, the iconic Greek-American soprano Maria Callas is heard in duets with a number of the greatest opera stars of her day. Some were her regular partners on stage and in recordings, while others made only an occasional appearance in Callas’s career, but her talent is such that she invariably establishes an affinity with each one in the studio that raises these duets to memorable musical and dramatic heights. This desire always to make the very best of her musical associations was part of Callas’s total dedication to her work The two singers with whom she recorded most were the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano and the baritone Tito Gobbi, who both appeared with her in her very first EMI Recording: Lucia di Lammermoor, made in Florence in February 1953. Like Callas, they were both able to bring their operatic characters to life not only by their superb singing but also by their vivid vocal acting. The programme here includes five duets with each of these great artists. The much-loved American tenor Richard Tucker, who appears here with Callas in the closing scene from Aida, was Callas’s partner in the very first performance of her main career when he sang opposite her in La Gioconda in the Verona Arena in August 1947, and they were together again at the very end of her stage career when she gave two performances of Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in March 1965 – one with Tucker and one with Franco Corelli. Other singers with whom Callas is heard on this album include the tenors Carlo Bergonzi, Eugenio Fernandi, Nicolai Gedda, Alfredo Kraus, Nicola Monti and Ferruccio Tagliavini; the mezzo-sopranos Fiorenza Cossotto and Christa Ludwig; and the baritones Piero Cappuccilli and Rolando Panerai. Another aspect of Callas’s art is seen in the wide range of music she performs here, from bel canto operas by Bellini (I puritani, La Sonnambula and Norma), Rossini (Il barbiere di Siviglia) and Donizetti (Lucia di Lammermoor), through the most popular lyric and dramatic works by Verdi (Rigoletto, La traviata and Aida) and Puccini (Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, La bohème and Turandot) via Ponchielli’s La Gioconda to Bizet’s masterpiece Carmen. Despite pleas from opera managements all over the world, Callas resolutely refused to perform Carmen on stage, but in 1964 she agreed to record it with Nicolai Gedda. She had also never sung on stage with Gedda, although they recorded together at La Scala in Il turco in Italia in 1954 and Madama Butterfly in 1955, but in the studio in Paris they formed an ideal partnership. Opposite Gedda’s matchless interpretation of Don José, Callas found countless nuances of meaning in the part of Carmen. The three duets included here show how vividly the two singers portray the deteriorating relationship between the gypsy girl and her doomed lover

Price: $19.98