Love, without music
I need to state right off the bat that I have never been one to worship at the altar of Maria Callas. While I can acknowledge her greatness, there are many other singers whom I prefer in the Bel Canto repertoire.
So I was skeptical when I began watching Callas Assoluta
I was hoping to hear wonderful music, but no single scene or aria is allowed to play in its entirety. Even the famous Tosca scene in which she kills Scarpia is only played in brief excerpt.
All of her well-known roles are represented, but the included book doesn’t list what the excerpts are or from what year. That information is listed in the final credits but scroll by at a such a fast clip, I had to keep rewinding to read them all. What I did find fascinating was all of the photos of Callas as a child and young adult.
Technically, the DVD is a mess. Several scenes either stalled the first time and then played, or stalled permanently and then jumped to the next scene. The English narration is atrocious. Two examples jumped out at me. In one, the word “epitome” is pronounced with a long o and no final e, and in the other, recounting the incident when Covent Garden management came to plead with her to show up for a fourth Tosca after she canceled the first three, the narrator says she “relinquished,” when it should be “relented.” Furthermore, despite the fact that the film was made in 2007, there is no Dolby sound.
There is one musical moment that tantalizes, however. In 1952, she sang Konstanze (in Italian) and there is a brief excerpt of “Marten aller Arten.”
If you know nothing about Callas, this might be a good introduction, but there are so many better documentaries about her that I’d skip this one.
La Cieca welcomes Our Own Sanford to our stable of reviewers.
Funny! I would have been best friends with her. There is something very reachable and girlish about her personality that one might not see at first glance. She is a most interesting study and a very sad case.
She got a royal rooking from Onassis.
arepo: I think she would have been fun to know although you might have had to be careful in dealing with her.
poisonivy: I’d say Joyce DiDonato is “completely down to earth” or else feigns it very very well. Read her blog. Email her. She often will answer, very nicely.
Why do people want their divas to be down to earth? The whole point is that they’re somehow special, other-wordly. I don’t want them to screw up their own careers by being complete horrors to work with, but it’s nice to have somebody who comes across as somehow extraordinary.
Maybe that’s why I always come away from DiDonato performances wondering what all the fuss is about – nothing there you can criticise, but equally nothing to cause a stir.
“Down to earth”- hehehe now that we’ve run out of nasty, negative things to say about everyone including LA Callas- do we suddenly want them to be “down to earth”? What piffle – what crap!
hehe
Well today’s “down-to-earth” divas are nothing compared to the Golden Age of Down-to-earth Divas in the 40s and 50s. Forget about the performances; everyone was just so darned nice and sincere! Thank goodness I still have my recordings to remind me.
Ruxton, I think you’re on to something …
One can / or will only consider a person as ‘being down to earth’….when you evaluate firstly , rightly or wrongly that they match your own vision of what you personally represent.Phew!!!
It is self reflective assessment compliment to oneself!
So is it any wonder an opera buff will weight up the
value of another fan; after being told which singers, they love.
I smile: thinking back, remembering the retorts of some opera fans. Sch as when they might have been asked to a a party and rejected the invitation. Why? The usual rely was “God, I CANNNNNT stand those people , they are all into ………(name of opera singer)!”
“Alto, are you doing enlarging the Vicar’s life cause to the use of great words long-accepted words in English?”
I can’t answer your question until you translate it from whatever language that is.
“She had an imperfect voice but was a marvellous singer.”
BINGO. You are so right. It is a pet peeve of mine that Americans commonly say they study or teach VOICE. This is nonsense. The Yale Music School — at least when I was there — claimed only to teach SINGING. (This was part of an old-fashioned usage that also included PIANOFORTE PLAYING, PIPE-ORGAN PLAYING, VIOLONCELLO PLAYING, etc. — for the obvious reason that you don’t teach PIANO, etc., you teach the PLAYING.)
My admiration for Callas is unbounded, and not for her voice but for her incomparable singing.
Alto: Or when people make silly comments about Callas being unsuited to bel canto because they confuse the term “beautiful singing” with “beautiful voice”. All we have to do is listen to Renee to know that a beautiful voice can sometimes have nothing to do with beautiful singing.