This week’s new release returns to Maria Callas’s studio recital recordings with a second volume spanning Puccini, Cilea, Giordano, Catalani and Boito, then Rossini, Meyerbeer, Delibes and Verdi, before closing with La Scala scenes from Cherubini’s Medea and Bellini’s La sonnambula. Tullio Serafin conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala in recordings made in 1954 and 1955.
The emotional centre is Boito’s “L’altra notte in fondo al mare” from Mefistofele, where Callas turns Margherita’s prison scene into something closer to a confession than a showpiece. The 1954 Watford recordings have especially fine presence and clarity, and the new XR remastering brings the voice and Serafin’s orchestral detail into sharper focus while preserving the character of the originals.
We also mark Erich Kleiber’s birthday on 5 August 1890 with 10% off all Pristine releases featuring this exacting and vividly theatrical conductor, from Beethoven and Mozart to Strauss, Handel, Schubert and Ravel.
