To write about Maria Callas is always a pleasure, to listen to her is shaking your emotions always. Today marks 48 years since we lost her, since we lost the most extraordinary opera singer in history. She always moves your emotions till the edge of the abyss of every character she sang. No matter if she performed it on stage or not. She dug the skin of every character to squeeze the essence of it.
I grow up listening opera. My mother was a great fan of Alfredo Kraus and we have all his recordings among many others. In my mother's collection we had Zeani's Puccini Arias, Sutherland's Portrait, an album by Marilyn Horne singing Lieder... and Callas' La Divina and Duets with di Stefano as well as one single with Casta Diva in side A and Mira o Norma in side B with Stignani.
I love all her recordings. In my opinion there was no one soprano to the same level, not to mention nowadays. Yes!, we could prefer another version of this and that title because the whole cast, conductor and sound, but Callas was profoundly dedicated to every single character she worked with.
Her career was not as long as we all would desire due to a sickness that was destroying her. The dermatomyositis was affecting her muscles structure as well as her skin. She was treated with prednisone, a medicament that in long treatments is dangerous for our body.
According to John Ardoin and Gerald Fitzgerald she sang Norma 84 times, Traviata 58, Tosca 53, Lucia 43, Aida 31, Medea 31, Turandot 23, Sonnambula 21, Trovatore 20, Bolena, Gioconda, Tristan und Isolde 12, Vesper 11, and so on and titles like Alceste, Andrea Chenier, Armida, Ballo, Barbiere, Betterlstudent, Boccacio, Cavalleria, Don Carlo, Entführung, Fedora, Fidelio, Forza, Iphigenia, Macbeth, Butterfly, Mefistofele, Nabucco, Orfeo ed Euridice, Parsifal, Pirata, Poliuto, Pronomastoras, Puritani, Rigoletto, Suor Angelica, Tiefland, Vestale and Walküre.
Unfortunately, EMI decided to recorded twice Lucia, Norma, Tosca... instead Macbeth, Anna Bolena, Don Carlo or Verdi's Requiem, for instance.
Few years ago I found a very interesting article by Prof. Robert Seletsky in divinarecords.com, the site dedicated to Maria that runs Pablo Berruti. Seletsky makes very interesting recommendations on the different editions about Callas' recordings. It worth a read. This is an extract of one of the articles updated last July 2024.
For the studio material, the task has become more complex with Warner Classics, the new owner of Cetra and EMI, having issued its 2014 set of all Callas’ commercial recordings (except two takes of 1949 Cetra Arias, discussed below). Warner remastered the ‘original analog tapes’ with 24-bit/96 kHz technology.
Having listened to the Warners for several years, either the engineers were very inconsistent or they were not being truthful about their sources. To begin, 24/96 technology, no matter how highly touted, is no guarantee of better results for analog material; often it is worse: harsh, boomy, thin. Moreover, CDs are encoded at 16-bit/44.1 kHz so a 24/96 transfer, of necessity, is down-converted for actual CD use.
Another problem is the putative ‘original analog tapes’. Especially with recordings made nearly seventy years ago in post-war Italy on brittle acetate-backed tape, what, exactly, are the ‘original analog tapes’? Obviously, the oxide on which the sound patterns were encoded, flaked off the backing many decades ago–the nature of acetate tape. Further, these ‘original tapes’ would have been copied numerous times using analog methods at various stages for international branches of EMI and Cetra to create master LP stampers. ‘Original tapes’ is therefore probably an impossibility, certainly for the earlier mono recordings.
A key issue is the unlikelihood of obtaining accurate digital results from old analog sources. The tapes were raw, not intended for listening but for processing via several analog stages. It was the final product that was judged and approved by the artists and producers. Those intermediate steps are not available via digital means, explaining the harsh or muffled results obtained by the digital manipulation of Callas’ mono material, the core of her output. It is most telling that all LPs sound plausible–except, perhaps, artificial stereo, or certainly, deceptively marketed LPs made from digital masters. Given its parameters, assuming the engineer had good materials, good information, and a good ear, analog mastering was always acceptable, even in the budget US Seraphim pressings from Capitol/EMI. No digital version of the mono material is accurate, and much of it is unappealing. Any mono LP will represent Callas nearly as she sounded. No studio CD truly can. Therefore, my CD preferences, in discussing the studio material, come with the qualification that I am choosing the lesser evil. If you have the LPs, listen to them.
Knowing that the availability of LPs and good equipment on which to play them is limited, I focus on CD options. There have been five official CD versions of the EMI studio recordings; four are differently equalized versions of the first analog-to-digital transfers: [1] pressings from 1984-90 with the EMI/Angel logo; [2] from 1991-95, as ‘EMI Classics’. Ostensibly from the same digital masters, with the same texts, look, track divisions, and catalog numbers as [1], these sound quite different; [3] the ‘Callas Edition’ (CE) 1997 (with live releases extending to 2003); EU and US pressings of this series, again, sound noticeably different: EU richer, US brighter. EMI apparently stopped pressing in the US during the latter part of this series. [4] Great Recordings of the Century (GROTC) 2002-5; [5] Warner Classics 2014, supposedly new transfers from analog tapes. [3] and [4] have been issued by EMI at differing price points, like slim-line budget ‘Historical Series’ reissues of CE or GROTC discs. Although LP transfers would seem like an excellent option to recapture the original sound, no efforts have yet been successful; e.g., Naxos, where fast CEDAR noise reduction ruined the sound in all but one case. The Cetra material, in the public domain for decades, has been subjected to countless editions. I focus only on the original Cetra CDs, 1984-7; the 1990s Cetras added reverb and other infelicities.
Of course, the easiest option in print is Warner, which I sometimes recommend below. But the other options are usually available in considerable quantities, used or new, and often for very low prices.
I have all the recommendations done by Prof. Seletzsky. If you are interested in some of them just write me to canariasesmusica@gmail.com and I will send you the link.
Source: divinarecords.com
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