Callas Norma

A true Callas cornucopia, this 70-CD set gathers together everything Maria Callas ever recorded in the studio. That's 26 complete operas (four of which are studio repeats), plus the complete studio recitals made during the legendary soprano's recording career, which lasted from 1949-69. The bonus CD-ROM contains libretti and translations in English, French and German, plus a Callas photo library, while remastered treats include Callas's first recital recording, originally made for the Fonit-Cetra label and featuring arias by Wagner and Bellini. –Barnes & Noble

1000x thanks for this!!!! –bungynik
Thank you fot this great collection!!! –gerelsalaito
Thank you, wonderful collection you are giving us. –joseph
Thank you, this is an awesome release. –thebaroninthetrees
WOW! The gems that keep appearing on AvaxHome! Thanks. –jobanx (AvaxHome Users)

With two official EMI versions and five complete live recordings, Norma is at the top of the Callas hit parade, but choosing a single version is a nightmare as each has its virtues, based on the state of the soprano's voice or the surrounding cast. My second choice lies with the 1955 live recording in Roma where nearly perfect performance is sustained by a correct if not excellent sound quality.
Once we get the obvious out of the way–that from 1950 to 1964 (and arguably both before and since) Maria Callas was the greatest Norma available–we have at least a half-dozen of her performances to choose from. Two were recorded in the studio, there's another from London, one or two from Milan, and a couple of others (along with this 1955 performance) from Rome. Here she was in her vocal prime. The voice is in control at all volumes, and from blazing top to cruel/tragic low notes her coloratura is flawless, idiomatic, and always at the service of the music and text. And this security allows her to "read" the role with searing insights, offering us equal parts Norma the Woman and Norma the Warrior. In short, it's as nearly perfect a performance of this role as we're ever going to hear. Her fury and hatred in her last-act confrontation with Pollione is as terrifying as her tenderness with her children is touching.
Partnering her is the somewhat brutal Mario del Monaco, who as usual makes up with vocal splendor what he lacks in nuance, and if the truth be known, he seems to try harder here to vary his approach than in most other recordings we have of his work. Ebe Stignani's Adalgisa is the best combination of girlishness and knowing; she partners Callas well. Giuseppe Modesti's Oroveso is properly booming. Tullio Serafin was a master of the score, and he brings both tautness and lyricism to it. The sound is good enough. This epic performance has been available on many labels (and still is); this is the only one I know of that is pitched properly–the others are sharp.
Robert Levine

Drawn in all but one instance from material issued previously on DVD by EMI, this video tribute to Maria Callas, marking the 30th anniversary of her death in September 1977, does its job for the most part strikingly well. In fact, there’s one item—a film of Callas singing “Casta diva” from an RAI-Rome New Year’s Eve telecast at 9 p.m. on December 31, 1957—that may in itself warrant your purchase of this DVD. Missing from the chronology of filmed performances in the final edition of John Ardoin’s The Callas Legacy (4th edition; Amadeus Press, 1995), and missing also from some of the “complete” performance chronologies elsewhere in the Callas literature, it appears here, “for the first time on DVD,” as a “special bonus feature”. This is a historic document.

A true Callas cornucopia, this 70-CD set gathers together everything Maria Callas ever recorded in the studio. That's 26 complete operas (four of which are studio repeats), plus the complete studio recitals made during the legendary soprano's recording career, which lasted from 1949-69. The bonus CD-ROM contains libretti and translations in English, French and German, plus a Callas photo library, while remastered treats include Callas's first recital recording, originally made for the Fonit-Cetra label and featuring arias by Wagner and Bellini. –Barnes & Noble

1000x thanks for this!!!! –bungynik
Thank you fot this great collection!!! –gerelsalaito
Thank you, wonderful collection you are giving us. –joseph
Thank you, this is an awesome release. –thebaroninthetrees
WOW! The gems that keep appearing on AvaxHome! Thanks. –jobanx (AvaxHome Users)

It's pretty simple-this boxed set contains EVERYTHING La Divina recorded in the studio, including newly-licensed and newly-remastered material! That's the first 69 CDs; the 70th CD is a CD-ROM containing the tracklists and photos. And the set comes inside a hardcover slipcase containing a color booklet packed with even more photos of this most photogenic of opera singers. As for the contents, well, again, it's EVERYTHING she did in the studio.

Best Callas 100 (part of the Best Classics 100 series) features 6 CDs of the best and most popular operatic arias and duets sung by legendary soprano Maria Callas from her EMI catalog of complete operas and recital albums. Each CD contains approx. 16-17 tracks.

Callas made her belated Paris debut with this concert at the sumptuous Paris Opéra—now known as the Palais Garnier—in 1958. It was a major social event, attended by le tout Paris, and Callas appeared on the famous stage wearing her most elegant couture and a million dollars’ worth of jewellery. She opened with Norma’s “Casta diva”, which was followed by Leonora’s plaintive aria and the gripping “Miserere” from Act 4 of Il trovatore, before she lightened the mood with “Una voce poco fa” from Il barbiere di Siviglia.

The gala evening at the Paris Opera on December 19, 1958 was announced in the press as ""the greatest show in the world". Maria Callas, at the height of her glory, performed for the first time in front of a Parisian audience. The diva delivered all the facets of her art through the Italian classics that she loved, with the theatrical genius that is proper to her. Paris gave her a triumphant evening!
The original recording of this evening, broadcast in Eurovision throughout Europe, has been newly restored with the greatest care.

If you want to know the reason behind all the fuss about Maria Callas, buy this CD. Callas's great gift was not purity of tone or emission, reliability, or sheer loveliness; it was, rather, her ability to change her vocal color and style to suit not only particular periods of opera but to get under the skin of the individual characters she portrayed.