Maria Callas - Callas at La Scala (1958/2014) [Official Digital Download 24-bit/96kHz]

Callas first sang at Milan's legendary La Scala for the opening of the 1951-1952 season (in Verdi's I vespri siciliani) and she became closely identified with the theatre, notably in productions directed by Luchino Visconti and his protege Franco Zeffirelli. Spontini's La vestale was staged for her there in 1954, Bellini's Lasonnambula in 1955, and her final La Scala performances came in 1962 with Cherubini's Medea. 'This wonderful record gives us… Callas at her most spell-binding and enthralling,' wrote Gramophone. 'Callas at La Scala… shows the diva at her most exciting and most beautiful'.

After triumphantly conquering La Scala in I vespri siciliani in December 1951, Maria Callas went on to have a series of spectacular successes there, especially in operas rarely performed like Medea, La vestale and La sonnambula. In May 1955, Callas had what was possibly the greatest triumph of her career with a new production of La traviata directed by Visconti and conducted by Giulini, and two days after the last Traviata, Callas began recording a programme of extracts from the three above-mentioned operas with Serafin conducting. But when she heard the finished tapes, she withheld her approval of the Sonnambula items and the release of the album was postponed indefinitely.

The reason for her dissatisfaction is not known but it possibly relates to a disagreement with Serafin about the vocal decorations. Callas had presumably intended to sing the elaborate ornamentation given to her by Leonard Bernstein when they performed the opera together earlier that year, but in the recording with Serafin the ornamentation is reduced to a bare minimum.

Eventually, Callas agreed in 1958 that the arias from Medea and La vestale could be released but coupled with extracts from the complete recordings of I puritani and La sonnambula, both of which had by then been issued. The Medea and La vestale items were on side 1 of the LP and the other material on side 2.

In the years that followed, Callas continued to refuse to approve the 1955 Sonnambula material, but after her death it was released in 1978 on an LP called Maria Callas – The Legend. In the 1980s, the 1955 recordings were released on two separate CDs and when the entire Callas catalogue was reissued in 1997, the Sonnambula tracks were reunited with those from Medea and La vestale but programmed in chronological order of composers, which put the Medea track first and finished with Sonnambula. The material is now assembled for the first time in the order intended for the original LP release that never took place.

Tracklist:

01 - La sonnambula, Act 1: "Compagne, temiri amici ….Come per me sereno" (Amina)
02 - La sonnambula, Act 3: "Oh, se una volta sola ….Ah! non credea mirarti" (Amina)
03 - Medea, Act 1: "Dei tuoi figli la madre from Medea" (Medea)
04 - La vestale, Act 2: "Tu che invoco con orrore" (Julia)
05 - La vestale, Act 2: "O nome tutelar" (Julia)
06 - La vestale, Act 3: "Caro oggetto" (Julia)

Recorded: June 9-12 at Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Italy.
Newly Remastered from the Original Master tapes at Abbey Road Studios, London, U.K.

Performers:
Maria Callas - soprano
Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano. Conducted by Tullio Serafin.


Thanks to the Original customer!

Too long filenames… Got an extraction error?
- Unpack to the root directory of the disc ("C:\" for example)