Scala di Shild

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 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 second studio recording of La Gioconda was made in 1959, six years after her last stage performances of the role, which in 1947 has been the vehicle for her Italian debut (at the Arena di Verona).The recording came at a turning point in Callas's life - when her relationship with Aristotle Onassis led to her separation from her husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini. Writing in Gramophone in 1960, Philip Hope-Wallace said: 'I simply cannot imagine anyone getting more out of the role than she does this time…the total effect is riveting.' Joining Callas were two young Italian singers destined for great careers: the mezzo-soprano Fiorenza Cossotto as her rival, Laura, and, as the sinister Barnaba, baritone Piero Cappuccilli.

"Turandot" - Opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini. Recorded in July 1957 in Milan. Performers includes Maria Callas, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Eugenio Fernandi, and more…

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'.

Gioachino Rossini was only 20 when he was commissioned to compose La scala di seta. It is one of four farsa comica operas which fed popular demand for this genre in Venice in the early 19th century and was wildly successful with its original audiences. Assisted by the silken ladder of the title, the diverting romantic intrigues of the narrative revolve around secretive assignations and obtuse misunderstandings, by no means helped by the presence of the slow-witted manservant Germano, in one of Rossini’s most successful comedies.

Each act of Puccini's episodic opera shows Manon Lescaut in a different light - from the ingénue of the first to the desperate, dying woman of the last. Though Callas never performed the role on stage, she captures every aspect of this passionate, but selfish and enigmatic character. In this particular Puccini opera, the tenor is by no means overshadowed by the soprano, and Giuseppe di Stefano duly dominates the gripping scene at Le Havre.The young Fiorenza Cossotto - a powerhouse in roles such as Amneris and Eboli - makes a cameo appearance as the Madrigal Singer.

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.

Gioachino Rossini was only 20 when he was commissioned to compose La scala di seta. It is one of four farsa comica operas which fed popular demand for this genre in Venice in the early 19th century and was wildly successful with its original audiences. Assisted by the silken ladder of the title, the diverting romantic intrigues of the narrative revolve around secretive assignations and obtuse misunderstandings, by no means helped by the presence of the slow-witted manservant Germano, in one of Rossini’s most successful comedies.