Callas was so much more than a vocalist. She was a singing actor, and probably the greatest the world has ever known. So while her weight may have caused a little loss of resonance to her voice, her character portrayal was, no doubt, enhanced by her slimmer and trimmer body. And her health certainly benefitted as well. I am just sorry we lost her so soon. There will never be another.
I agree -- it wasn't enough to sing the music, however gloriously, but embodying the character as a "leading lady" required making changes to her appearance. It's impossible to imagine, IMO, the difficulties she put herself through to accomplish what she did in to become the ultimate "singing actor" as you said.
"probably"? One would say "absolutely". And as a musician, 'probably' surpassing Cortot, Horowitz, Hifetz in greatness . Glen Gould recounted that he once had a vivid dream of being onstage singing a opera duet with Maria! Her voice and vocal projection evolved in time by personal choice. Her later recordings all surpassed earlier versions, her 1957 Un Ballo in Maschera at La Scala is superior in every way to her studio recording the year before. It was her change of lifestyle upon meeting Onassis that precipitated her withdrawal from the opera house.
Her loss of weight and her vocal decline were BOTH due to a then-undiagnosed (prior to 1975) autoimmune disease called DERMATOMYOSITIS because they simply didn't know much about it and just autoimmune disorders in general at the time. So it wasn't the weight loss per se that caused her much-speculated premature vocal problems as well as very possibly the fatal heart attack she unfortunately had at the young age of 54.
Callas was a vitally important singer in that the PUBLICITY she garnered helped pivot the focus of opera performances away from just dramatic vocalism to a complete absorption in the character, but she was neither the greatest nor the first. Let me enlighten you. Olive Fremstad, Magda Olivero, Inge Borkh, Martha Mödl and Shirley Verrett were all in her class, but Callas was the only one of them who regularly sang a boatload of those puerile bel canto roles which had fallen into the realm of caricature.
This is a complete masterpiece. On the last note of DÁmore sull ali she dimished the speed of the vibrato...this is technically impossible, only CALLAS could do such a thing with absolute control. DIVINA!!
The weight loss argument will never end,and ultimately, what does it matter, short though her career was, there has never been singing like this, the diction, legato, portamento and sheer emotion of her performance is breathtaking. History has the final word, the voice of the century.
I really wish everyone would stop saying weight loss was the main reason her voice changed. She has other medical problems and stresses that she’s had to face in her life. Age is also a contributing factor of voice change. Please, let’s
Could not agree more. It's unfortunate that people want to make her personally accountable for the vocal decline. Either the weight, the overworking, the Onassis lifestyle, etc., as if she wouldn't have lost it if she did this or that, or behaved more responsibly. Regarding the weight loss specifically, she was pressured by colleagues to do it (there are stories of Giulini, Serafin, and Gobbi giving her grief for her size), and then told afterwards that she shouldn't have in order to preserve the voice. I see why she identified so closely with the role of Violetta. It's clear that she struggled with lifelong chronic illness and without a support system of reliable friends or family. She gave everything for the public, and they scolded her not doing it right or not doing enough.
@@rossmerchant8435 thank you for this. I suppose Maria suffered the fate of all truly groundbreaking figures especially women. Expected to be both exceptional and conforming to astound and reassure be radical and correct all whilst being charming and non-threatening yet Thrilling and iconoclastic. Containing Contradictions that cannot be contained. How exhausting.
Неімовірна майстерність, фаньанстична, фантастичне володіння диханням. Марія божественна, бо підняла мистецтво оперного співу на недосяжну висоту. Дякуючі Богу ми були свідками і сучасниками цього сяйва краси. Яка відданість музиці, яка важка ноша підтримки опанованого рівня майстерності !!! Світ її недооцінив і не зберіг свою Марію Каллас ❤️🇺🇦
When I listen to this performance, I always feel it is the greatest interpretation of all time. The voice, power, refinement, the gorgeous sound, so far have not been matched. Also, as far as I know the "Vivra!" starting at 17:40 has never been sung at this tempo and I don't think in her later recording she takes it this speed. The descending scale into the lower voice at 17:57ish is like a machine gun. I love the fat Callas, I love the thin Callas, the artistry and interpretations evolved over the years, but there is something about the early years that makes one wish she hadn't lost the weight.... yet, having said that, listen to the first Lucias and the last recording. It was all there from the beginning but interpretations in her later years were superior, regardless of any vocal decline... wash my mouth out with soap or my ears, because her artistry for me cancels surpasses any such nonsense.
Thank you… I feel the same, and i was trained in Bel Canto in the lineage of Tettrazinni. I am derply moved by Callas’s later work, and find her voice at that point greater than mist 28 year old Sopranos today. My Bel Canto teacher passed away at 95 years two weeks ago, and i am bereft… She, ofcourse adored Callas. She would weep and bow her head upon listening to Callas.
GB, devo dirlo, Warren e' un taccozzone becero al confronto che e' davvero schiacciante non ostante la Maria stesse debuttando un ruolo, Leonora, non previsto in stagione e improntato in pochi giorni. Il miracolo che puo' fare solo una grande musicista e cantante assieme..cioe' lei sola.
@@fabriziogarzi9892 assolutamente d'accordo... io preferisco 100 volte un Tagliabue, grande verdiano, a Warren. E aggiungo che un Mac Neil ed un Merril sono accettabili mentre Sherril Milnes lo trovo decisamente sopravvalutato. Giusto per restare fra i baritoni statunitensi. Il grande fra tutti fu decisamente Laurence Tibbett... ma ormai è storia...
@@numetutelare Tagliabue era quasi un belcantista, bel timbro dolce, ottocentesco, grande comunicativa. Poco considerato oggi. Merrill mi e' sempre piaciuto moltissimo. Tibbett era un fuoriclasse dal timbro strano, incisivo, graffiante. Artista stratosferico. McNeil aveva un bel colore ma gli ha sempre oscillato la voce.
@@fabriziogarzi9892 condivido in toto... e comunque questi erano tutti veri artisti... e non scordiamo Apollo Granforte e Carlo Galeffi che considero dei fuoriclasse scioccamente dimenticati... voci che oggi polverizzerebbero tutti quei baritoni a spanne che si credono anche eccelsi...
@@numetutelare ma praticamente oggi il "baritono" non esiste quasi piu'. Interpellando alcuni mezzosoprano giovani prima di averli ascoltati chiedo " tu che mezzo sei? " e lei o loro "sono un mezzosoprano rossiniano! Ecco, Rossini ha fatto il disastro, ha rattrappito le voci a furia di cantare "frazionato" nessuno ha il legato e la voce tenuta. Tra 20 anni, se saremo vivi, il palco sara' vuoto e muto.
Adoro Callas em várias Óperas. Mas a Tebaldi com Del Mônaco são insuperáveis nesta Opera. For exemplo. Aquele Rigolleto com Di Stefano e Tito Gobbi. A Manon Lescaut de Puccini com Di Stefano. Aquela Lá Boheme com Di Stefano e outros grandes nomes. Queria saber se existe a Lá Traviata junto com Di Stefano. Ótima no Barbeiro de Sevilha.
I need a live Callas Trovatore, but I'm so torn... maybe someone can help me. Do I get this one on Divina, or the 1953 performance from Milan under Votto? Is there a meaningful difference in her take on the role ~3 years later?
Her pre-weightloss voice was colossal, a voice that she only had 4-5 years. Alas! But I often wonder, had she become a legend if she had stayed fat and had continued to sing like this?
Actually considering the fact the she was a full rounded professional singer since the age of 16 at the Athens opera, her majestic pre-diet voice lasted almost 15 years.... Thinking of her full international career, from the summer of 1947 to the spring of 1954 her "prime" voice lasted at least 7 years, working on a supernatural level (especially from 1950 to 1953).. What came after, from the summer of 1954 to the spring of 1959 was the next step of her incredible singing, less explosive for sure but even more intense and refined, her Sonnambula or Bolena are incomparable milestones... From the summer of 1959 to her last concerts in the 70s, it was a different singer every single year, sometimes the voice resonates better, sometimes it was a complete mess, but always the most incomparable "mess" of all times! Her 1968/1969 recordings of Verdi's heroines are true gems...
I do agree with you. She relied on the weight for her support and when she lost that support, the support came from a much more muscular place. Had she been taught better breathing support, she might have lasted a lot longer. Oh vanity, thy name is Woman!
Yes she lost we lost the most complete consummate consistent instrument of profusion power passion and precision ever to have fallen on the human ear. Such that only its proof of presence delivers proof of possiblity. But to say what motivated her physical shift was mere vanity is to say too much by making little of something immense. This is not how we honour so incalculable a benefactor.
I don't think her weight loss had the slightest thing to do with vanity or the fact that she was a woman. She was a consummate performer who needed to move freely on stage without being inhibited by extra weight. In any regard, her fat was not what made Callas who she was. It was the passion inside her soul and the truth she brought to each performance.
NON SI PUÒ CANTARE ELEONORA CON QUESTO ACCENTO DA ERINNI !!!!!! ELEONORA NON È LADY MACBETH NÉ MEDEA......QUALSIASI AUTORE AFFRONTASSE ( PUCCINI VERDI..O BELLINI.) L'ACCENTO ERA SEMPRE ESAGERATAMENTE TRAGICO !!!!! PER QUESTO, PUR RICONOSCENDO LE SUE NON COMUNI QUALITÀ VOCALI, NON L'HO MAI AMATA!!!
E allora? Il tuo non è un parere di riferimento e conta quanto zero, nell'ordine delle cose. Fortunatamente, c'è chi ne capisce molto più di te ed È PER QUESTO CHE L' HANNO SEMPRE AMATA!
Of the two, Callas is the standout complete performer. While Leonard Warren sounds like he has a mouth full of cotton balls, as opposed to the clear healthy sound of his baritone colleagues and superiors like Nelson Eddy, Mattia Battistini, etc - he's just hitting the notes on the page without delivering the role of Conte di Luna. Callas, while not having as beautiful clear voice as some of her superiors and colleagues in the same role of Leonora, she does have what many of her colleagues and superiors lack - she learned to deliver the characters she is portraying more consistently. Now did she fail at times to practice what she preached? Of course! Don't we all? But she strove to avoid constantly doing that critical problem - and she learned such from Maestro Serafin. So the short answer is - Callas becomes Leonora, Leonard is a disappointment.
Le son est détestable et Maria Callas avait ( et a toujours gardé ) cette émission vocale '' dans les joues '' qui fait que tout le monde la reconnaît et ce n'est pas un compliment... cela fait penser à une ventriloque.
Callas was so much more than a vocalist. She was a singing actor, and probably the greatest the world has ever known. So while her weight may have caused a little loss of resonance to her voice, her character portrayal was, no doubt, enhanced by her slimmer and trimmer body. And her health certainly benefitted as well. I am just sorry we lost her so soon. There will never be another.
I agree -- it wasn't enough to sing the music, however gloriously, but embodying the character as a "leading lady" required making changes to her appearance. It's impossible to imagine, IMO, the difficulties she put herself through to accomplish what she did in to become the ultimate "singing actor" as you said.
"probably"? One would say "absolutely". And as a musician, 'probably' surpassing Cortot, Horowitz, Hifetz in greatness . Glen Gould recounted that he once had a vivid dream of being onstage singing a opera duet with Maria!
Her voice and vocal projection evolved in time by personal choice. Her later recordings all surpassed earlier versions, her 1957 Un Ballo in Maschera at La Scala is superior in every way to her studio recording the year before. It was her change of lifestyle upon meeting Onassis that precipitated her withdrawal from the opera house.
Her loss of weight and her vocal decline were BOTH due to a then-undiagnosed (prior to 1975) autoimmune disease called DERMATOMYOSITIS because they simply didn't know much about it and just autoimmune disorders in general at the time. So it wasn't the weight loss per se that caused her much-speculated premature vocal problems as well as very possibly the fatal heart attack she unfortunately had at the young age of 54.
Callas was a vitally important singer in that the PUBLICITY she garnered helped pivot the focus of opera performances away from just dramatic vocalism to a complete absorption in the character, but she was neither the greatest nor the first. Let me enlighten you. Olive Fremstad, Magda Olivero, Inge Borkh, Martha Mödl and Shirley Verrett were all in her class, but Callas was the only one of them who regularly sang a boatload of those puerile bel canto roles which had fallen into the realm of caricature.
This is a complete masterpiece. On the last note of DÁmore sull ali she dimished the speed of the vibrato...this is technically impossible, only CALLAS could do such a thing with absolute control. DIVINA!!
Strepitosa, incredibile, meravigliosa, inarrivabile Divina Maria Callas ❤️❤️❤️
The weight loss argument will never end,and ultimately, what does it matter, short though her career was, there has never been singing like this, the diction, legato, portamento and sheer emotion of her performance is breathtaking. History has the final word, the voice of the century.
Of course there has been. Listen to anything Jessye Norman.
@@francoisbessingJessye Norman, lovely voice, different repertoire, and ultimately no point of comparison !
I really wish everyone would stop saying weight loss was the main reason her voice changed. She has other medical problems and stresses that she’s had to face in her life. Age is also a contributing factor of voice change. Please, let’s
Could not agree more. It's unfortunate that people want to make her personally accountable for the vocal decline. Either the weight, the overworking, the Onassis lifestyle, etc., as if she wouldn't have lost it if she did this or that, or behaved more responsibly. Regarding the weight loss specifically, she was pressured by colleagues to do it (there are stories of Giulini, Serafin, and Gobbi giving her grief for her size), and then told afterwards that she shouldn't have in order to preserve the voice. I see why she identified so closely with the role of Violetta. It's clear that she struggled with lifelong chronic illness and without a support system of reliable friends or family. She gave everything for the public, and they scolded her not doing it right or not doing enough.
@@rossmerchant8435 thank you for this. I suppose Maria suffered the fate of all truly groundbreaking figures especially women. Expected to be both exceptional and conforming to astound and reassure be radical and correct all whilst being charming and non-threatening yet Thrilling and iconoclastic. Containing Contradictions that cannot be contained. How exhausting.
@@rossmerchant8435 idiots Our Maya was a person. 🙏🌏🌍🌎💙🤗😪greetings from France Arnaud Bourbon Amaral
Other worldly! Just plain phenomenal! Thank you SO much for sharing this masterpiece.
Qué belleza esta versión, impresionante....bravooooo divinaaaaaa
This is my favourite version of this duet. Thank you!
최고의 프리마돈나
마음을 움직이는 힘
너무 고통속에 사라져서 마음이 아픔니다
Totalmente absoluta e insuperable Diva MARÍA CALLAS!!
The way to freedom: Maria Callas the Queen 👑
Неімовірна майстерність, фаньанстична, фантастичне володіння диханням. Марія божественна, бо підняла мистецтво оперного співу на недосяжну висоту. Дякуючі Богу ми були свідками і сучасниками цього сяйва краси. Яка відданість музиці, яка важка ноша підтримки опанованого рівня майстерності !!! Світ її недооцінив і не зберіг свою Марію Каллас ❤️🇺🇦
Вона єдина така незрівнянна...
Los grandes años de la Callas
Sempre meravigliosa
Superba voce.
When I listen to this performance, I always feel it is the greatest interpretation of all time. The voice, power, refinement, the gorgeous sound, so far have not been matched. Also, as far as I know the "Vivra!" starting at 17:40 has never been sung at this tempo and I don't think in her later recording she takes it this speed. The descending scale into the lower voice at 17:57ish is like a machine gun. I love the fat Callas, I love the thin Callas, the artistry and interpretations evolved over the years, but there is something about the early years that makes one wish she hadn't lost the weight.... yet, having said that, listen to the first Lucias and the last recording. It was all there from the beginning but interpretations in her later years were superior, regardless of any vocal decline... wash my mouth out with soap or my ears, because her artistry for me cancels surpasses any such nonsense.
Thank you… I feel the same, and i was trained in Bel Canto in the lineage of Tettrazinni. I am derply moved by Callas’s later work, and find her voice at that point greater than mist 28 year old Sopranos today. My Bel Canto teacher passed away at 95 years two weeks ago, and i am bereft… She, ofcourse adored Callas. She would weep and bow her head upon listening to Callas.
Only our Maya 🙏🌏🌍🌎💙😪 Grazie amico mio Arnaud Bourbon Amaral greetings from France 🇫🇷
Her Majesty Maria Cecilia "La Divina" Callas .....eternal Assoluta Primadonna !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Divina
Kurt Baum was the tenor in this performance. I don't believe that has been mentioned elsewhere in the comments.
This is gorgeous singing, and the slow tempo suits the aria (only Callas could pull it off, making it sublime, rather than melodramatic).
Bravi!
Lo ripeto, in questo ruolo la Callas ha creato una pietra miliare della lirica verdiana. Tutti in piedi e giu' il cappello!
GB, devo dirlo, Warren e' un taccozzone becero al confronto che e' davvero schiacciante non ostante la Maria stesse debuttando un ruolo, Leonora, non previsto in stagione e improntato in pochi giorni. Il miracolo che puo' fare solo una grande musicista e cantante assieme..cioe' lei sola.
@@fabriziogarzi9892 assolutamente d'accordo... io preferisco 100 volte un Tagliabue, grande verdiano, a Warren. E aggiungo che un Mac Neil ed un Merril sono accettabili mentre Sherril Milnes lo trovo decisamente sopravvalutato. Giusto per restare fra i baritoni statunitensi. Il grande fra tutti fu decisamente Laurence Tibbett... ma ormai è storia...
@@numetutelare Tagliabue era quasi un belcantista, bel timbro dolce, ottocentesco, grande comunicativa. Poco considerato oggi. Merrill mi e' sempre piaciuto moltissimo. Tibbett era un fuoriclasse dal timbro strano, incisivo, graffiante. Artista stratosferico. McNeil aveva un bel colore ma gli ha sempre oscillato la voce.
@@fabriziogarzi9892 condivido in toto... e comunque questi erano tutti veri artisti... e non scordiamo Apollo Granforte e Carlo Galeffi che considero dei fuoriclasse scioccamente dimenticati... voci che oggi polverizzerebbero tutti quei baritoni a spanne che si credono anche eccelsi...
@@numetutelare ma praticamente oggi il "baritono" non esiste quasi piu'. Interpellando alcuni mezzosoprano giovani prima di averli ascoltati chiedo " tu che mezzo sei? " e lei o loro "sono un mezzosoprano rossiniano! Ecco, Rossini ha fatto il disastro, ha rattrappito le voci a furia di cantare "frazionato" nessuno ha il legato e la voce tenuta. Tra 20 anni, se saremo vivi, il palco sara' vuoto e muto.
Adoro Callas em várias Óperas. Mas a Tebaldi com Del Mônaco são insuperáveis nesta Opera. For exemplo.
Aquele Rigolleto com Di Stefano e Tito Gobbi. A Manon Lescaut de Puccini com Di Stefano. Aquela Lá Boheme com Di Stefano e outros grandes nomes. Queria saber se existe a Lá Traviata junto com Di Stefano. Ótima no Barbeiro de Sevilha.
I need a live Callas Trovatore, but I'm so torn... maybe someone can help me. Do I get this one on Divina, or the 1953 performance from Milan under Votto? Is there a meaningful difference in her take on the role ~3 years later?
A vida emocionalmente dolorida e o seu coração partido essas foram,sim as causas da morte prematura de Maria Callas!
Baum's timbre is very similar to R Tucker's timbre
Her pre-weightloss voice was colossal, a voice that she only had 4-5 years. Alas! But I often wonder, had she become a legend if she had stayed fat and had continued to sing like this?
Actually considering the fact the she was a full rounded professional singer since the age of 16 at the Athens opera, her majestic pre-diet voice lasted almost 15 years.... Thinking of her full international career, from the summer of 1947 to the spring of 1954 her "prime" voice lasted at least 7 years, working on a supernatural level (especially from 1950 to 1953).. What came after, from the summer of 1954 to the spring of 1959 was the next step of her incredible singing, less explosive for sure but even more intense and refined, her Sonnambula or Bolena are incomparable milestones... From the summer of 1959 to her last concerts in the 70s, it was a different singer every single year, sometimes the voice resonates better, sometimes it was a complete mess, but always the most incomparable "mess" of all times! Her 1968/1969 recordings of Verdi's heroines are true gems...
@@lifeisnice23 totally agree!
Kurt Baum tenor
To lose this glorious sound just for the sake of looking slim. Can't help but love her but also be angry at her.
I do agree with you. She relied on the weight for her support and when she lost that support, the support came from a much more muscular place. Had she been taught better breathing support, she might have lasted a lot longer. Oh vanity, thy name is Woman!
@@Campuscoll Totally agree.
Yes she lost we lost the most complete consummate consistent instrument of profusion power passion and precision ever to have fallen on the human ear. Such that only its proof of presence delivers proof of possiblity.
But to say what motivated her physical shift was mere vanity is to say too much by making little of something immense.
This is not how we honour so incalculable a benefactor.
I don't think her weight loss had the slightest thing to do with vanity or the fact that she was a woman. She was a consummate performer who needed to move freely on stage without being inhibited by extra weight. In any regard, her fat was not what made Callas who she was. It was the passion inside her soul and the truth she brought to each performance.
@@persaeculavolare She herself admitted later on that after losing the weight, she lost her support, hence the wobble.
17:30 19:21
La Divina ? La Divina ? No no La Adivino
NON SI PUÒ CANTARE ELEONORA CON QUESTO ACCENTO DA ERINNI !!!!!! ELEONORA NON È LADY MACBETH NÉ MEDEA......QUALSIASI AUTORE AFFRONTASSE ( PUCCINI VERDI..O BELLINI.) L'ACCENTO ERA SEMPRE ESAGERATAMENTE TRAGICO !!!!! PER QUESTO, PUR RICONOSCENDO LE SUE NON COMUNI QUALITÀ VOCALI, NON L'HO MAI AMATA!!!
E allora? Il tuo non è un parere di riferimento e conta quanto zero, nell'ordine delle cose. Fortunatamente, c'è chi ne capisce molto più di te ed È PER QUESTO CHE L' HANNO SEMPRE AMATA!
Of the two, Callas is the standout complete performer. While Leonard Warren sounds like he has a mouth full of cotton balls, as opposed to the clear healthy sound of his baritone colleagues and superiors like Nelson Eddy, Mattia Battistini, etc - he's just hitting the notes on the page without delivering the role of Conte di Luna. Callas, while not having as beautiful clear voice as some of her superiors and colleagues in the same role of Leonora, she does have what many of her colleagues and superiors lack - she learned to deliver the characters she is portraying more consistently. Now did she fail at times to practice what she preached? Of course! Don't we all? But she strove to avoid constantly doing that critical problem - and she learned such from Maestro Serafin. So the short answer is - Callas becomes Leonora, Leonard is a disappointment.
I almost reported you.
Le son est détestable et Maria Callas avait ( et a toujours gardé ) cette émission vocale '' dans les joues '' qui fait que tout le monde la reconnaît et ce n'est pas un compliment... cela fait penser à une ventriloque.
You entirely miss the genius of her artistry. Your loss.