Release Date: 31 December 2005
Label: Naxos - Historical / Naxos Historical
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 2
Barcode: 747313302628
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: Puccini
Description
Giacomo Puccini (1858 -1924)Madama ButterflyWhen EMI [Columbia/Angel] recorded Callas asMadama Butterfly in August 1955, she had not yet sungit in the theatre, nor would she ever do so at La Scala,Milan, where it was made and her career based. InNovember that year, three months after it wascompleted it was first published in the United States,when she ventured three performances; the only timeshe ever would, at the end of her second and last seasonwith the Chicago Lyric Opera; the last time she wouldsing in opera there. The most [in]famous photograph ofher ever taken was backstage immediately after that lastperformance when she is still clad as Butterfly. Astartled looking process-server is hastening awayhaving just satisfied legal requirements and thrust a writinto her kimono; she is shrieking after him, her mouthcontorted in a hyena-like snarl. In a trice, the world'spress translated her from the arts section into a frontpagepersonality.Contrary to legend Callas was not a famous Puccinisinger. In her Athens days she appeared as SuorAngelica and Tosca. Later, during her first years inItaly, she sang Tosca in a number of provincial theatres,and abroad at Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro, but thereare few reviews of her performances and those thatthere are, at least by the standards she was accustomedto even then, are not very revelatory or enthusiastic. Sheappeared in it at the Met in two seasons, 1956/7 and1957/8, but only because its repertory was narrow andthere was little else; she was for ever complaining aboutit. Not until the end of her stage career was she able tomake an effect as Tosca, by which time her histrionicskill, adeptly supported by Zeffirelli, notwithstandingfast failing vocal powers, had matured. Turandot shesang at the beginning of her international career in Italyand South America on 24 occasions in 1948 and 1949,but save for a recording she did not undertake it again:'It's not really very good for the voice', she admitted.She recorded Mim?â?¼ [1956] and Manon Lescaut [1957],but neither would she undertake on stage.The star of the set is Karajan. Recorded less thanfifty years after the premi?â?¿re of the opera, it enables usto admire how eloquent the beautifully idiomaticperformance of La Scala's orchestra and chorus couldbe in a verismo opera and under the sway of a frontrankingconductor then at the height of his powers.Unfortunately the singers are not so successful. TheSwedish/Russian lyric tenor, Nicolai Gedda, althoughstill young, he was only thirty, is a refined musician ofconsiderable linguistic skill and has an easy, wellblendedhead register; what he lacks, however, is theone thing essential that Pinkerton calls for, a sensualItalianate vocal quality to match the melodies: in theduet O quanti occhi fissi and aria Addio fiorito asil.When Callas undertook Butterfly in Chicago, criticswere unconvinced. Roger Dettmer, in the 'ChicagoAmerican', who describes himself as 'Callas-crazy formore than a year', having been at all
Tracklisting
William Primrose
William Primrose
Vinay:Nbc So&Chorus:Toscanini
Vienna Po:Knappertsbusch
Vienna Po:Furtwangler
Vienna&Berlin Po:Furtwangler
Various Composer
Various (1923-1955)
