Maria Callas: Toujours (Paris 1958)
The career of Maria Callas was just a bit too early and too brief to receive full and satisfying video documentation like that now being accorded to such singers as Renée Fleming and Luciano Pavarotti. This black-and-white televised recital (Callas's Paris debut) took place at the Paris Opera on December 19, 1958 when television was still in its infancy. We might wish that it had happened earlier, when her voice was in better condition, or later, when video recording technology was more advanced--so that, for example, we would not have to take the narrator's word that Callas is wearing a red dress. But this is probably the best available Callas video recording, and her fans will welcome it warmly. Visual elements were as important as the vocal dimensions in her art.
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Sigmund Kühßeir
TMDB1 year ago
Maria Callas - Paris 1958
Callas’s Paris debut came relatively late in her career. She sang her first opera in 1939, had her first Italian successes at Verona in 1947, made her South American debut in 1949 and reached La Scala in 1950, London acclaimed her in 1952, Chicago in 1954, Berlin in 1955, Vienna ’56. That same year also saw her long-expected, long-delayed arrival at the Metropolitan, New York, and the next brought her back home to Athens. Venice, Rome, Palermo, Mexico City, Philadelphia, Dallas, Madrid, Lisbon and Edinburgh were other cities to witness the triumphs and controversies of this extraordinary decade. And then at last came Paris: the city she was to make her home and in which she was to die.
In defence (if it was felt to be needed) loyal Parisians might have argued that the point was not that Paris was late, but rather that this first appearance at the Opéra was the final summit, the ultimate conquest, and that the splendour of the occasion in the Palais Garnier on that December night bore witness to the fact. Had any other city given her quite such a magnificent welcome? Where else had the head of state turned out in the pouring rain, with all that was elegant, famous and rich packing the house for a show that played to a whole continent beyond its walls? And then, when she appeared on stage, that slender, stylish figure, in the gown variously described as scarlet and champagne, adorned by a million dollars’ worth of loaned jewellery, descended the staircase and stood before this brilliant audience, was it not exactly the scene of which dreams are made? At the centre of the stage she stood, which at that moment felt like the cultural centre of Europe if not of the world. At the very least it provided a gratifying end to a year which had begun in anger and continued in turbulence.
1958 is still remembered as the year of the Rome walk-out. For Callas, the new year had opened with throat-sprays and panic: the voice had disappeared and...
