December 2 will mark the centenary of the birth of Maria Callas, absolute icon of operatic art. Warner publishes his recordings, this time organized by roles, with studio recordings and concert recordings mirrored. Opera Magazine in France publishes a “collector’s issue”. We invited its editorial director, Richard Martet, to give us his take on the legend.
On May 29, 1965, on the stage of the Palais Garnier in Paris, a drama was played out. It is a representation of Norma by Bellini, the third in a series of five started on May 17. THE World headlined the day after the premiere “Callas triumphs in Norma “. But the day after the performance on May 29, the shock wave spread until New York Times :« Maria Callas fails to finish Paris role “This May 29, his voice in tatters, his intonation doubtful, Callas stops in the middle of Norma. She would not appear on an opera stage again until her death on September 16, 1977 in Paris. The ax fell on an extraordinary career.
“It’s a cut in historical reality, but not in his head,” corrects Richard Martet. With Franco Zeffirelli, she considered numerous returns, notably twice in La Traviata in 1967-1968 and in 1974-1975. There are also theater projects, a film project, a Tosca filmed. There is a whole list of Maria Callas projects. And there was the recital tour with Di Stefano in 1974, which she accepted to please the tenor. » Said tour passed on May 13, 1974 in Montreal and ended on November 11 in Sapporo.
A disc phenomenon
When asked about the Callas myth, Richard Martet offers a double reading. “First of all, she is a completely unique voice, an atypical singer, with a very particular slow vibrato and extraordinary range. »
But the editorial director ofOpera Magazine notes in the same breath: “I think if it arrived today, it wouldn’t be the same. » At the basis of this reasoning, he notes the optimal period in which the singer’s rise took place. “If the myth has persisted, it’s because there were so many records. His first recordings were 78 rpms. She made the transition from 78 rpm to LP, then from monophony to stereo. This accompanied a record revolution in every home in the 1960s.”
And Richard Martet remembers: “In the 1950s and 1960s, when buying RCA, we bought Zinka Milanov then Leontyne Price. By buying Decca, we bought Renata Tebaldi and Joan Sutherland, and by buying EMI, we bought Maria Callas. At the end of the 1960s, when I was a kid in Bordeaux, when we wanted a Traviata, there was Callas, Tebaldi and Sutherland, not much else. Conversely, look at the offer we have today! » Callas was the one who, with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Nicolaï Gedda, benefited fully from the explosion of the LP to acquire a legendary status in the eyes of our colleague.
From this point of view, our interlocutor considers that “for opera lovers, the dimension people has always been marginal. The scandal of the Norma from Rome in 1958 [lors d’un gala à Rome le 2 janvier, en présence du président de la République italienne, Callas n’est pas remonté sur scène après le 1er acte, entérinant définitivement sa réputation de diva capricieuse]the connection with [Artistote] Onassis, Onassis’s remarriage to Jacqueline Kennedy have never really excited opera fans. »
Three phases
Callas’s singing has been very uneven throughout his career. We asked Richard Martet to keep as cool a head as possible to guide us through this labyrinth of roles and dates. According to him, we can distinguish three periods. “From 1949, the first extraordinary recitals recorded for Fonit Cetra, to 1955-1956, everything is very good vocally. » Very good, but not necessarily significant. The famous EMI producer Walter Legge, husband of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, does not have an eye on Callas’ roles, but on the sales potential.
“EMI had him record four complete operas in a row some summers, plus recitals. It started at the beginning of August and ended in mid-September. Walter Legge made her record a lot of things, not necessarily what she should have recorded, because he was afraid that certain operas would not sell. This is why we never had Alceste by Gluck, The Vestal Virgin by Spontini, Poliuto by Donizetti or He hacked by Bellini, and so on. Walter Legge was perhaps right at the end of the 1950s: we would not have sold thousands of copies of The Vestal Virgin, by Spontini. » In terms of history, it’s something else…
“Instead of letting her immortalize Alceste And The Vestal Virginhe therefore makes him record Bohemian, Manon Lescaut And Cavalleria rusticana. It’s not that she sings badly, but, excuse me, we don’t care and, what’s more, Mimi’s role in Bohemian, she hated him so much that she always refused to do him on stage. Legge obliged because it was a good deal. » From this period and these obligatory roles, Richard Martet highlights Madam Butterfly“who vocally resembles Mimi and where she is extraordinary”.
Everything goes well until 1956. In 1956 the second period begins. “The vibrato broadens and we begin to hear it, but in 1957 and 1958, there are still wonders, or even in 1959, The pirate at Carnegie Hall, extraordinary, as well as Poliuto from 1960 at La Scala. »
In the records, these signs of vocal decline are compensated by an additional interpretative investment. Richard Martet takes his example from the two recordings of La Gioconda by Ponchielli: “In the 1952 song for Cetra, the voice is radiant, totally in control. In the one from 1959, where the vibrato is less in control, it is so much more interesting… There you go! From 1956 onwards, the voice no longer follows as well and, frankly, it is often no longer very pleasant to listen to, but the interpretation is brilliant. Callas compensated and played on this, because she knew very well that the voice was getting lost! »
The fall
The third phase began with the liaison with Onassis in 1959. “She began to sing much less, very little on stage, and to take periods of leave of two or three months. » Richard Martet notes that the voice had been in great demand at a young age: “When we look at her schedule between 1949 and 1954, it’s astonishing the number of evenings she gave: she sang all the time, while she never he was not thirty years old. This most likely damaged his voice. »
The fact that she sacrifices her career to her private life, that Onassis displays her like a trophy, that she sings less and plays her instrument less, like any athlete, as she approaches forty will be fatal. During 1962 and 1963, she almost only sang in concerts with an orchestra. “It’s not at all the same thing,” notes Richard Martet. This is also where she records a lot of records because her taste for perfectionism finds expression in the record. »
In relation to the stage, this taste for perfectionism will bring down the ax. “After the years 1962 and 1963, there is the return of 1964 and 1965 documented by numerous pirate editions which allow us to understand what is happening. There are Tosca Or Norma where we find the Callas – not the one from 1949, let’s be honest, but the one from 1956-1957, slightly damaged. And there are other evenings when she barely makes it; where it is unbearable. Until the terrible Norma of May 29 in Paris, where she stopped and never returned. »
Richard Martet sees the recordings in 1964 of the second as a miracle Tosca and of Carmen for EMI with Georges Prêtre. “I don’t know how, in his state of mind, this could have happened. It took 14 days of recording spread over four weeks to Tosca ! She was so upset that it was necessary to multiply the takes. »
For the centenary, Warner is publishing a new version of these documents and brings together in a box of 131 CDs the studio operas and live released in 2017, including 10 recital CDs and adding three lives not previously included: La Traviata from 1955 and A masked ball from 1957 at La Scala and the Somnambulist from 1957 in Cologne.