Lucia Callas

Maria Callas was born to a Greek family in New York in 1923. Her vocal training took place in Athens, where her teacher was the coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who had sung with Enrico Caruso and Feodor Chaliapin. After early performances in Greece, Callas’s international career was launched in 1947 when she performed the title role in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda at the Arena di Verona in Italy. Her voice defied simple classification and her artistic range was extraordinary. In her early twenties she sang such heavy dramatic roles as Gioconda, Turandot, Brünnhilde and Isolde, but over the course of her career her most famous roles came to be: Bellini’s Norma and Amina (La sonnambula); Verdi’s Violetta (La traviata); Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena, Cherubini’s Medea and Puccini’s Tosca. Though her timbre was not always conventionally beautiful, Callas’s musicianship and phrasing were in a class of their own. She brought characters to vivid life with her skill in colouring her tone and making insightful use of the text.

In the six years that had passed since 1953, and her first recording of Lucia di Lammermoor, Callas's voice had maybe become less robust, but her singing had become still more perceptive. As Gramophone said: 'Mme Callas has refined her interpretation of the role, and made it more exquisite, more fascinating, musically and dramatically more subtle - in a word, more beautiful'.

This Lucia di Lammermoor was the first complete recording that Callas made under the aegis of Walter Legge for EMI/Columbia - and also her first recording with Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi and her mentor Tullio Serafin. She had made her role debut as Lucia the previous year, bringing tragic stature to the archetypal fragile bel canto heroine. Gramophone described her recorded performance as'certainly some of the finest singing of our time'.

Maria Callas’ first rendition of Lucia on record is an iconic album in several respects: it marks the official beginning of her collaboration with EMI, provides the first example of the legendary alchemy occurring between her and her favorite male partners Tito Gobbi and Giuseppe Di Stefano, and is still nowadays considered the best version of Donizetti’s masterpiece on the vocal front. Callas’ unique impersonation of the tragic heroine culminates in a hair-rising mad scene, never being equaled!

In 1939, as a 15-year-old student in Athens, Maria Callas made her stage debut in the demanding role of Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana. Five years later she sang it professionally with the Greek National Opera Company. In 1953, when she was already a star - shortly to record Tosca - Tullio Serafin enlisted her as the last-minute replacement for an indisposed colleague at the sessions for Mascagni's one-acter at La Scala. The result was a recording in which full-blooded verismo was raised to new interpretative heights.

A famous backstage photo was taken in Chicago after one of just three performances that Callas gave of Madama Butterfly; it shows the soprano in her Japanese costume, snarling furiously at a bailiff who had served a writ on her - the very image of the tempestuous diva. By contrast, in her recording of the role, 'it is, miraculously,' as the critic John Osborne observed, 'the 15-year old girl and not the great Callas who stands before us.' Her genius for vocal characterization finds an apt complement in Herbert von Karajan's conducting: 'a wholly sympathetic rendering [that]brings out more of the detail of the score than I have ever heard before', wrote Gramophone.

The amazing success of Maria Callas was not only related to her unique voice, but also to her stunning scenic charisma. The alchemy of the magnetic duets she shared with the elite of male Italian singing, then at its apex, have contributed to the legend of the Scala evenings. This collection of the most moving duets in Italian opera features such singers as Giuseppe Di Stefano, Franco Corelli, Richard Tucker and Tito Gobbi.

Digitally remastered 3 discs collection of American-born Greek soprano, Maria Callas. She was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Many critics praised her bel canto technique, wide-ranging voice and dramatic interpretations. Her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini and, further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner. Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as 'La Divina'. This compilation features mono and stereo recordings from 1952 to 1982 and includes a 64 pages booklet with many photos.