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!
The Ravenswood Chat Room will open its doors at 1:15 PM EST Saturday. See you there!
POSTED at
8:04 PM
31 Comments:
Was anyone else at the Rossini OTELLO last night at OONY. Heard from a reliable source that Vargas cancelled because he hadn't learned the part (may have realized he couldn't do it!!!) They had to scramble to get Ford, who probably sang it better than than Vargas would have, but who doesn't possess the most beautiful tenor voice in the world. I liked the opera but realized where do you find three great Rossini tenors these days. Wish we had had Florez and Barry Banks last night. Mac Pherson was the most interesting man on stage.
I look forward to this Saturday's broadcast but know that this performance took place on a day when Maria was quite ill. I've heard that she's not in good voice. While I consider her one of the greatest Lucias to have been captured on recording, I do think that the tessitura of the role taxed her voice. Whenever I've heard a live recording of her Lucia (even in her prime years) the sound has than reedy quality that became more prominent later in her career. I just don't think that the tessitura of the role was that congenial to her voice. And there are many passages in this opera where I just require beautiful sounds -- after all it ain't Norma.
Her mad scene is something else of course. From those haunting opening notes until the final cabaletta, she's pure magic.
I can barely wait for her "Al fin son tua, al fine sei mio"!
Paddypig --
I was there and enjoyed the first two acts enough to be thinking about buying Carreras' recording. (Nothing against the performance; I had to get up at 5 to teach an 8:30 class.) I agree with you about Ford -- vaguely disappointing. Certainly not interesting enough to pay $73 for his recording. MacPherson woke things up considerably -- I'm looking forward to seeing him in Donna Del Lago. Tarver started out interestingly enough, but he seemed to run out of air on his big cabaletta, squeaking his top notes.
There was an old Time mag article I read once that Maria made sparks after her broadcast Lucia performance by getting into a fight with the Edgaro (Gaiatti?) for holding his notes too long in the love duet scene. She was never dull.
Vargas cancelled due to a stomach virus - not because he didn't learn the part. I heard Donose was amazing - particularly in Act III.
the stomach virus was the official story! You don't announce to the world you don't know the part, unless you are Pavarotti.
otello is about the only rossini opera i kind of like (but only kind of!) ... with florez it should be amazing.
which brings me to the point that i went to see FILLE DU REGIMENT at covent garden yesterday and it was one of the best things i have seen there ever - and that from me, who doesnt really like comic operas. everyone was just spot on and so involved in their roles. plus its a fabulously funny production - and florez really nailed those 9 high c's... it gave me goosebumps. and i dont get those easily!
plus dessay was quicksilver on stage. and dawn french as the countess crackenthorpe was such a hoot. oh i am raving. when did that happen?!?!
make sure u kill for a ticket once the production reaches the met!
I was at the LUCIA on 12/3/56 and Callas was in great voice. However, she did have a flare up during the broadcast on 12/8. She claims Sordello held the note too long at the end of their duet. He was supposedly fired after the performance. Her statement was that anyone who heard the broadcast would back her up.
More on the Callas/Sordello LUCIA. Sordello did sing one more performance on 12/11, but Callas didn't. Dolores Wilson was the Lucia. Sordello never sang again at the MET.
this broadcast was available on Melodram for many years.
Paddypig - I'm interested to know your sources. Unless you are somehow directly related to Mr. Vargas himself. I'm close with several people who are affiliated with OONY and who were involved in this specific production - the opera was being done FOR Varags in the first place. I don't think he, who is one of the better artists of the modern day, would be so unprofessional as to ask an organization to produce an opera specifically for him and then not actually learn the part.
Why is it that people ALWAYS jump to the worst conclusions if someone cancels!? Everyone assumes that the singer is having vocal trouble or doesn't know their music or has overbooked themselves. Of course there are plenty of singers who do and need to cancel for those reasons...but people DO get sick (especially in the winter time and there HAS been a stomach thing floating around the music scene of NYC) and things arise in people's lives that prohibit them from being able to carry out their plans.
When was the replacement of Vargas by Ford announced? Just curious, because the Playbill looked unretouched. I'm sure they can turn these things around fast, but you would think if it were a stomach virus, the decision wouldn't be made until a day or so before. If that's really the case, those people can turn around a print job fast.
Sorry I got the singer wrong who Callas had the feud with for holding his note. The story was in an old anthology of Time stories the mag put out in the late 60s. Magaret J. gave the details in her intermission today. How did Campora rate as a singer? I aint familiar with him.
From what Margaret J. mentioned, the Met was still using the Lucia sets La Pons used all the time. Out of curiosity what did Callas do at the end of the mad scene? Did she just fall over, or pull the table cloth around her, like Pons? And what is supposed to be done with poor Arturo's body; is he just left upstairs?
This broadcast was reputed to have presented La Divina sounding not so divine; I didn't hear it that way. I thought she sang beautifully, given her vocal estate in late 1956. I have a few reservations about the tenor (didn't care much for the yodeling/gargling in the final scene), and the orchestral playing was a bit scrappy--but I really enjoyed this broadcast, as I hope everyone else did. I think a few times a season, the Met should rebroadcast more of these historic performances, as they are infinitely more elucidating than some of the routine crud that comes over nowadays. Perhaps it's time to reconsider broadcasting each and every Saturday's performances.
I agree; Callas sounded wonderful considering it was 1956 and she was already spotty by then. Her vibrato was a little wide in spots, and she left the E-flats out of the mad scene, but overall, very nice. Boring Tenor though.
I am nothing if I am not a humble servant of La Divina, but I think though that I am in agreement with Ardoin in 'The Callas Legacy". He said it was one of her most uneven Lucias and so it was. She could not even hold onto the D flat at the end of the sextet. Her top was just not there on that day and she was short of breath and had less finish to her phrasing than was her norm. Mais c'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?
All that being said, imagine the shock, the utter shock, she must have been to a city that had, up to that point, Mme Pons as its vocal idea of Lucia. Wish I had been there.....but I was SO not born yet.
I had always heard that Callas shouted "Basta!" at Sordello, and that it was clearly audible in the house. We didn't hear it today...if it really happened.
This performance was butchered beyond belief. Callas was very good, for the most part. We should not lament the loss of some high notes that Donizetti didn't even write in the first place.
This performance must have been a revelation to Met audiences grown use to the sound of Lily Pons. I was very impressed.
Dear iTdCS,
Interesting you can't imagine someone for whom a production was mounted to not learn their part. have you ever heard of, I don't know, say, ANNA NETREBKO?
You don't announce a FULL week before a performance you are sick and cannot sing, as it was in the present situation.
Odds are Vargas had the high notes under control when he signed on, but judging from his recent Idomeneo in Paris, he no longer has them (for now at least) and decided not to embarass himself.
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
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