The most beautiful sound I ever heard
In honor of the one and only Met broadcast of Maria Callas, La Cieca announces yet another of her online chats. Join your darling doyenne on Saturday afternoon, January 20 to discuss the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera broadcast of Lucia di Lammermoor.
The Ravenswood Chat Room will open its doors at 1:15 PM EST Saturday. See you there!
Vargas could not possibly have learned the Othello because at this point he CAN”T SING IT!! He has vocally failing for a long time, the Romeo was god awful and his Lucia is in bad shape too. His Traviata with fleming was abyssmal I mean come on he sounded like a gardner no a leading tenor. Everyone that truly knew someone close to the source (other than his agents who I am sure have tried to spin the stomach bug excuse) knew that he can’t sing it and even the board of OONY questioned Queler’s intentions on the subject. She even put up her own money to advertise it. and if he is such a GREAT artist these days why could he only sell 60% of the house. Long gone are the days when he sang the Bel Canto rep well.
I’m sure some of you know about the firing of Callas by Bing. I bring this up now because the whole affair centered around LUCIA. She had signed, probably not her, but her husband, to do LUCIA and the new production of MACBETH. When she saw the schedule she was horrified. It was MACBETH a few times and then LUCIA in between. She said her voice “was not an elevator” and she could not go from one opera to another like that. Bing referred to her performances elsewhere when she sang such roles as Isolde, Gioconda, Lucia, etc., but that was when she was a young and still an unproven singer. So she was fired. Leonie Rysanek sang the premiere of the new production of MACBETH which was meant for Callas.
opera enthusiast:
That’s a somewhat distorted version of the events. The sticking point was not the main part of the season but rather the spring tour. Callas didn’t want to return to the US in late spring and then shlep around in trains for six weeks for not very high fees; there’s also the possibility that she was nervous about the vocal demands of the role of Lady Macbeth. Add to that the fact that her business manager was the hysterical Menehgini, and you can see why Bing finally put his foot down and withdrew the contract which was Callas had still not signed.
That said, few singers really enjoy jumping from role to role — they prefer the concentration of a run of a production in the stagione style. Callas was just ahead of her time in refusing to alternate roles. And I believe she did this more for artistic taste than for the “voice is not an elevator” excuse.
The problem with the up and down roles was an excuse. After being fired Callas went to Dallas and alternated Traviata with Medea.
Reading the excerpts available from the Bing – Callas correspondence at the time, it looks a lot more like Callas was just indecisive about coming back to the Met. She admitted not having sung well during her first two seasons there. She had not sung Macbeth in many years and her voice by 1958 was not reliable. I can understand her not wanting to take the risk of bad reviews in New York under the spotlight of a Met premiere, new production, etc.
It was a lot better for everyone involved for Bing to “fire” Callas thus giving the Macbeth premiere a lot of publicity and for Callas to be “fired” rather than voluntarily withdrawing from the production. Under the circumstances they were both winners. Were it not for Callas enormous notoriety, it would all have gone unnoticed. (Just try to remember how many times singers have widrawn from new productions or new roles because they could no longer get through them.)
Added to Callas’ likely reluctance to tackle Lady Macbeth at this point, Callas was probably not too keen on doing Lucia anymore. During her second season at the Met she transposed down the Mad Scene. She just wasn’t confortable anymore with that sort of high-wire role. Pefectly understandable and no shame for that. (For the record: She recorded Lucia and sang it on stage only two more times the next year in Dallas.)
This is not a criticism of Mme Callas. If anything the opposite. Don’t we all wish that more singers today would drop roles for which they are no longer suited? Callas knew how to make the best of her resources and singing Lady Macbeth was probably not the way to do it. Both she and Bing could have been more tactful in handling the situation but as I said earlier this may very well have been the best way for both.
Incidentally, note also that the firing incident did not result in any long-standing animosity between Callas and Bing. They stayed in touch for many years. He always talked admiringly about her. He brought her back to the Met in 1965. And other than some for-the-press comments lamenting her having been fired, etc., I’m not aware of Callas attacking Bing personally. I think they understood each other quite well.
Speaking of singers who are or should be ill and pull out of a performance, does anyone know if Cristina Gallardo-Domâs will still be singing Mimi this Wednesday (as scheduled)? I was listening to my recording of her Cio-Cio San from earlier this season, and I must say, there is much NOT to like. Perhaps there is an interesting cover waiting in the wings …
I wonder now if it was just a coincidence that Leonie Rysanek’s first New York performance was at Brooklyn College on Flatbush Avenue(in a concert version) of Macbeth on March 1958 and then was Lady Macbeth, at the premiere of the new production in February 1959 at the MET replacing Maria?
I know it happened 50 years ago, but was there some other reason Sordello got fired quickly, besides holding a note too long. I assume Maria was enough of a theatre pro to have gotten used to what stage people do to each other in the course of a performance, and she had done the same thing to other singers. Was there some Valetti reason Bing wanted ES gone in a hurry?
I also heard that Vargas cancelled because he either didn’t learn the role or realized he could not sing it.
I hate to be such a poor sport, but they should’ve ENDED the broadcasts with the Callas’ Lucia….from then on all I could do for the rest of the weekend is dig her recordings out, watch her interviews with Lord Harewood, read book upon book about her, look at pictures right and left…..I can’t get out of the fact of how bewitched I am with listening to her….I feel ruined forever.
lol you probably are