LA Forza Del Destino

Am 2. Dezember 2023 feiert die Welt den 100. Geburtstag von Maria Callas.

Am 2. Dezember 2023 feiert die Welt den 100. Geburtstag von Maria Callas.

Maria Callas wurde am 2. Dezember 1923 im New Yorker Stadtteil Washington Heights als zweite Tochter der griechischen Einwanderer George Kalogeropoulos (1881–1972) und Elmina Evangelia Dimitriadou (1894–1982) aus Meligalas geboren. Ihr älterer Bruder Vassilios war in Griechenland an Typhus gestorben. Die Eltern lebten zu diesem Zeitpunkt seit sechs Monaten in den USA.

American star tenor Michael Fabiano presents a spectacular set of scenes taken from late Donizetti and middle Verdi operas, revealing the strong ties between these two composers. The album documents a paradigmatic shift in Italian opera, from the beautiful lines and crispness of belcanto to a richer, more dramatic musical universe. The historical line stretches from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Poliuto and Maria di Rohan to mature Verdi operas such as Rigoletto, Un ballo in maschera and Don Carlos. In many cases, Fabiano has selected original, rarely-heard versions, including the thunderous ‘Qual sangue sparsi’ from the original St. Petersburg edition of La forza del destino.

The album is reflective of Joseph’s flourishing career as one of the leading tenors. Regular performer at the world’s greatest opera houses.

Callas’s first stage appearances in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera came at La Scala in 1957, a year in which Milan also saw her in La sonnambula and Anna Bolena. As in this recording, made the year before, she shared Verdi’s most spectacular soprano-tenor duet (in Act II) with Giuseppe di Stefano. This was the last time Callas and Di Stefano appeared together in opera, though they reunited in the 1970s to direct I vespri siciliani in Turin and to give a series of joint concerts in Europe, the USA, Canada,South Korea and Japan. Gramophone judged this recording of Ballo to be ‘one of Callas’s most compelling assumptions’.

Callas's two comic roles were both in operas by Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia and Il turco in Italia. She first played the capricious and flirtatious Fiorilla - a married Neapolitan woman who takes up with a visiting Turk - in Rome in 1950. Five years later, at La Scala, she appeared in a production by Franco Zeffirelli, also, famously, the director of her Covent Garden Tosca and Paris Norma. Gramophone wrote: 'Callas acts vividly, chiding, boasting, melting, and when in typical Rossinian style she is given a 'key' figure, each repetition of it carries, so one thinks, a slightly different meaning. I found myself teased by memories of these little phrases for hours afterwards'.

Verdi is Andrea Bocelli's seventh studio album and fourth classical album, of Verdi's most famous arias, released in 2000. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, accompanied Bocelli for the album.

Sony Classical is proudly presents "Domingo at the MET", a triple Anniversary set with many previously unreleased live recordings celebrating Plácido Domingo’s 45th season at the Metropolitan Opera.