Norma Rai
Culminating the month-long Maria Callas mania over at Rai 3, this Saturday the Italian radio network will broadcast a newly restored version ("il cui audio verrà restaurato per l'occasione") of the celebrated June 29, 1955 concert of Bellini's Norma.Co-starring with La Divina are Mario del Monaco and Ebe Stignani, under the baton of Tullio Serafin. That broadcast should begin at 2:30 PM New York time; everyone else will have to puzzle it out from there.
While this Norma is hardly an "lost performance," currently available dubs of the broadcast are of frustratingly poor quality. Some are pitched incorrectly; others substitute bits of other performances from Callas commercial recordings or other sources. If this Saturday broadcast indeed presents a complete and cleaned-up version, joy will indeed be unconfined.
Oh, and here's a direct link to the Rai 3 player. (La Cieca thanks dear Herman Melville for both the tip and the headline.)
POSTED at
3:01 PM
2 Comments:
My Opera D'Oro recording is in good sound but I did not know about the wrong pitch instances and sections where other recordings were inserted. Going to have to tune in on Saturday. It's a great performance, regardless. Maria's performance is even stronger than her La Scala performance from the same year though perhaps not as vulnerable as the La Scala.
I'll confess that I can't stand performances where there is no audience, or where the audiences are ordered to be quiet, such as was the case in many European radio broadcasts of the period, particularly in Germany. I find that that atmosphere has a real deadening effect on the singers. Many of those performances strike me as antiseptic, clinical, and eviscerated and I can't stand them.
One person told me this performance is such a case. Was that person wrong? Are the singers acting? Do they interact with the audience? Is there applause after the big numbers, Casta Diva, and so on?
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