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67 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MARIA CALLAS' FIRST "CASTA DIVA" LEFT FOR POSTERITY, December 5, 1999
A recently unearthed live recording of Maria Callas, one of the most famous and influential opera singers of all times, was first issued on Divina Records by Pablo D. Berruti last July. On this CD, you can hear the first part of the gala concert celebrating the Argentine Declaration of Independence that took place in Buenos Aires on July 9, 1949. Callas' participation consisted of the recitative ("Sediziose voci"), cavatina ("Casta diva") and cabaletta ("Ah! bello a me ritorna") from the Act I of Bellini's NORMA, all unpublished and unheard for fifty years. This is one of the first recordings ever to have captured the great voice of Maria Callas, and the very first time Callas' singing of one of her signature arias was recorded (her first public performance of it dates, according to one source, from July 4, 1938). For the record, only six of Callas' ninety Normas were behind her when she sang this excerpt on July 9, 1949.This is the first commercial release of Divina Records (catalogue number: DVN~12, ADD, mono), and it will probably leave the listeners in amazement at the brilliance of Callas' achievement. The scene sung on the Buenos Aires concert had been performed exactly four months before Callas' first studio recordings, which included "Qui la voce" from I Puritani, "Liebestod" (in Italian) from Tristan und Isolde, and "Casta diva" from Norma (first issued on three Cetra 78s in May 1950). Many critics have praised the 1949 studio version of Callas' "Casta diva", the first of her three studio renditions of Bellini's most famous cavatina. However, the Buenos Aires concert performance is in every respect superior to it, and to a considerable degree. This could be, in fact, Callas' best live recording of "Casta diva". In comparison to the studio version made four months later, Callas sounds far more relaxed and inventive here. This is a rich voice of limitless possibilities, fresh and beautiful in timbre, literally sculpting Bellini's long arches of sound with utter effortlessness. The legato lines are pure perfection, the vocal ornaments impeccable, the interpretative details telling. In no other Callas recording of this aria will you hear such memorable effects as, for instance, the wonderful hush on the word "ardenti" at the beginning of the second verse. The beauty and lightness of the B-flat in the cadenza and the way she "caresses" the descending chromatic scale that follows are hard to describe. The cabaletta, sung in the purest belcanto virtuoso style, is delivered with more freedom and spontaneity than on the Cetra commercial recording. As if this were not enough, Callas caps the cabaletta by a superb, rock solid forte high C, completely dominating the chorus and the orchestra at one point. As on Cetra, she approaches the high C from the lower G, but holds it longer, achieving greater steadiness (the same note on the Cetra recording would not be ideally steady). Most incredible, however, is the fact that such accomplished singing of one of the most taxing bel canto scenes as heard on this recording came from a woman of twenty-five. In addition, the Divina Records edition offers the complete surviving excerpts of the performance of NORMA in Teatro Colon (June 17, 1949) with Callas, Fedora Barbieri and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni (Callas' third Norma sung in public, by the way). Her voice was captured only in the first-act duet "Oh, rimembranza", and it is the only document of her partnership with Fedora Barbieri in this work (an exceptionally expressive and memorable Adalgisa, if judged from this recording). Of the numerous mezzos whose voices were captured together with Callas' in NORMA (Barbieri, Simionato, Stignani, Nicolai, Pirazzini, Ludwig, Cossotto), I have never heard a more engaging and exciting Adalgisa than Barbieri's is in this eight-minute excerpt. Although it has already been issued on several CD editions (Melodram, Gala, Eklipse), the superiority of the Divina Records release in terms of sound is unquestionable - it has been remastered from the original paper-tape source. This, together with the recitative, cavatina and cabaletta performed on July 9, are the first documents (alas, incomplete) of Maria Callas in the role most closely associated with her. With years, her singing of Norma's lines would become deeper with meaning, but the fresh, easy freedom encountered here would not be repeated. Had the singing not been as great as it was, these excerpts would have still been worth acquiring. In addition, a performance of Marguerite's scene from the third act of Gounod's FAUST, handsomely sung by the young Argentinean soprano Helena Arizmendi (who also sang Liu to Callas' Turandot during the same period), and an early document of Nicola Rossi-Lemeni's Oroveso. While he would record the role for EMI in 1954 with Callas in the title-role, Rossi-Lemeni's voice would lack the smoothness, power, and homogeneity heard in the introductory scene with chorus ("Ite sul colle, o Druidi") on this CD. All material published DVN-12 (except the Norma-Adalgisa duet) has been issued for first time on compact disc. The CD booklet (twenty-eight pages in all) consists almost entirely of press reviews, transcriptions of radio commentaries, Callas' letters to her newly wed husband Meneghini (who was obliged to stay in Italy during her Buenos Aires engagement), and some very rare photographs. The booklet presents the original Spanish with English translations. An interesting footnote: there are no fewer than nineteen complete versions of Callas' "Casta diva" preserved in sound (plus both of her Juilliard master classes on it, during which she sang few lines). They range from Buenos Aires, 7/9/1949 (this recording), to New York (master class), 3/2/1972. Of the studio versions, I would single out the first EMI (1954) as the best; as far as the live material is concerned, the Buenos Aires performance may well be the most impressive (although the 1952, 1953, and 1955 versions are also vying for honours). Milan Petkovic E-mail: petkovic@ionsys.com
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~ Giuseppe Verdi
~ Vincenzo Bellini
~ Christoph Willibald Gluck
is one of Maria Callas' 
