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Giuseppe Di Stefano, Maria Callas, Orchestre du Mai Musical Florentin , Tullio Serafin – Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:50:24 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
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!
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Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Tito Gobbi, Nicola Monti, Rolando Panerai, Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Tullio Serafin – Ruggero Leoncavallo: I Pagliacci (1954/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:49 minutes | 717 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
The role of Nedda in Leoncavallo’s verismo classic never entered Callas’s stage repertoire, and so her recording made with the forces of La Scala, Milan, between 12 and 17 June 1954 represents one of her explorations of an opera made purely within the confines of the studio, rather than developing over a period on the stage. But as in all such cases – this was the first time she recorded a role she had not previously sung – Callas’s desire to explore it to the fullest remains paramount. There is a complete identification between singer and character, down to the smallest detail, that make her Nedda an unusually complex creation that grows throughout the opera as she responds to its desperate emotional thrills and spills.
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Giuseppe di Stefano – Neapolitan Songs (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:54 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical, Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © EMI Classics
Italian tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano was one of the most charismatic figures of the operatic stage. The natural richness of his tenor voice made him the ideal master of Neapolitan Songs. Combining tremendous emotional urgency and power, Di Stefano sings beloved classics including “Funiculi Funicula,” “Marechiare,” “Anema E Core” and more. Di Stefano brings these treasured works to a new level of musical expression. Absolutely essential.
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Maria Callas & Giuseppe Di Stefano – Leoncavallo: Pagliacci (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:49 minutes | 709 MB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Maria Callas Commendatore OMRI (December 2, 1923, New York – September 16, 1977, Paris) was a leading 20th-century Greek mastiff. Her vocal art and special acting skills have been praised by a host of critics. Her repertoire spanned from the classical opera seria and the bel canto works by Donicetti, Bellini and Rossini, to the later opera by Verdi and Puccini. In addition, at the dawn of her career she performed Wagner melodramas. Honoring her musical and Dramatic Art, operatic audiences dubbed her Callas La Divina (“The Divine”).
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Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Tito Gobbi, Raffaele Arié, Valiano Natali, Anna Maria Canali, Gino Sarri, Coro e Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Tullio Serafin – Gaetano Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor (1953/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:50:24 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Maria Callas’s first studio recording of Lucia is often nominated as one of the great sets in the history of recording. It was made in Florence in February 1953 following live performances at that city’s opera house (although with a largely different cast and conductor). It was the soprano’s first recording with Giuseppe di Stefano and Tito Gobbi – both to become regular and valued colleagues – and with Tullio Serafin (already a regular collaborator). It was also the first of producer Walter Legge’s projected series of major Italian operas under Callas’s recently agreed new contract with Columbia.
Read more![Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Rolando Panerai, Nicola Rossi-lemeni, Angelo Mercuriali, Carlo Forti, Aurora Cattelani, Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Tullio Serafin - Vincenzo Bellini: I Puritani (1953/2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/29/0825646254347_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Rolando Panerai, Nicola Rossi-lemeni, Angelo Mercuriali, Carlo Forti, Aurora Cattelani, Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Tullio Serafin – Vincenzo Bellini: I Puritani (1953/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:22:04 minutes | 1,36 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics
In August 1947 Maria Callas, newly arrived back in Europe from an abortive search for roles in America, secured the role of Gioconda at the Verona Arena and met the second great musical influence on her life, the opera’s conductor Tullio Serafin. With Serafin, Callas went on at first to sing Turandot, Aida, Brünnhilde and Isolde (the last two in Italian).
Serafin was a passionate Wagnerian but he had other ideas for his protégée. In the 20th century up until then the bel canto roles of Donizetti, Bellini or Rossini had been taken generally by light coloratura voices like that of Elvira de Hidalgo, Callas’s teacher in Athens. Revivals of the operas thus became showcases for vocal agility rather than serious music drama. Callas, thought Serafin, could bring to these works a heavier voice that took all their agilitá in its stride while imbuing them with dramatic credibility.
Callas first studied Norma with Serafin (making her debut in the role at Florence in November 1948). Then, the following January at Venice’s La Fenice, the conductor persuaded her to learn and take over Elvira in I puritani at just three days’ notice after her last Brünnhilde of the season. Callas’s success in two such disparate roles yielded comparisons with legendary singers of an earlier generation like Lilli Lehmann.
It led Callas personally, and the repertoire in general, to a new focus on roles that had been written as vehicles not only for singers with exceptional vocal capabilities but for dedicated and effective actresses. In bel canto roles like Bellini’s Norma, Amina and Elvira or Donizetti’s Lucia and Anna Bolena Callas went on to uncover their sheer drama. This was the very quality (representation of character being at least as important as singing) that, at the expense of more accomplished vocalists, Bellini sought while insisting on Giuditta Pasta as Norma or, for that matter, Puccini when casting Hariclea Darclée as his first Tosca because of her beauty.
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