Donizetti: Lucia Di Lammermoor

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Cat No: 8110131-32

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Release Date: 12 January 2004

Label: Naxos - Historical / Naxos Historical

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 2

Barcode: 636943113127

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: DONIZETTI

Description
Gaetano DONIZETTI (1797-1848)Lucia di LammermoorDonizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor was the firstcomplete recording for EMI that Callas took part in, inFebruary 1953; sessions followed performances ofLucia at the Comunale, Florence. Angel published it inthe United States in January 1954 and Columbia inBritain in March 1954, but after Tosca and I Puritani,both of which also include her, but were made later.Walter Legge, EMI's record producer, explains why ina letter to Dario Soria of Angel records. 'Tosca is so farsuperior to both Puritani and Lucia that I beg you inyour own interests to hold up the other operas untilTosca is published.' Presumably he was not writingabout the operas but about the recordings. It was Callas,however, who made all these recordings, particularly ofPuritani and Lucia, and as we see today she continuesstill to create a demand for them, notwithstanding morethan half-a-century having passed and now they are inthe public domain.Legge had been busy in the music business since1932. By the time these operas were recorded he was inhis mid-forties, his taste reflected in London's concertlife, and by recordings throughout the world.Unfortunately, he was not properly appreciative ofCallas; he did not make complete recordings of her inI vespri siciliani, Armida, Macbeth, Anna Bolena orIl pirata, all of which he might have done, for in themshe enjoyed some of her greatest triumphs. Not untilafter Legge's death did EMI feel obliged to poach onthe pirates and publish amateur recordings of liveperformances of some of these operas. That is not to saythe recording of Tosca is not outstanding; it includesCallas's Tosca, Tito Gobbi's Scarpia, Giuseppe DiStefano's Cavaradossi, the chorus and orchestra of LaScala, Milan, but, as di Stefano pertinently observes,'the miracle of that Tosca was the conductor de Sabata'.After Callas's death in 1977 in an obituary Leggeacclaims it 'Callas's supreme recording ... after nearly25 years still unique in the history of recorded Italianopera'. Certainly it is 'still unique', but 'Callas'ssupreme recording'? If we only had her Tosca how littleof her art would have survived. Tosca needs to be sungwell but the contribution of the orchestra is quite asimportant, whereas in Puritani and Lucia it does notsignify. Indicatively the recording of Tosca is complete,whereas those of Puritani and Lucia are muchabbreviated; whole scenes are not included, somepassages have been shortened, second verses of ariasand cabalettas deleted, and codas cut. In the 1950s,when the recordings were first published, it was claimedthese were made so as to minimise conventions in oldfashionedworks, but what they did was enable most ofthe cast, who had not the technique, notwithstandingremarkable voices, to cope with the music. Beingtrained by teachers brought up in the age of verismothey could not easily manage the wide range andexacting tessitura required in bel canto opera.Callas is the exception. The sensation her singingcaused when th
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