MARIA CALLAS The Verdi Opera Collection (studio recordings, 1953-1956) - PABX048

"There is addiction to the heroine...such art is priceless" - Gramophone

"For Callas collectors this will be a very important release, even perhaps a revalation" - Fanfare

Before signing a contract with Walter Legge at EMI, Maria Callas had already committed herself to recording four operas for Cetra in Italy. Of these, only La Gioconda in 1952 and La Traviata in 1953 materialised; it remains unclear as to why the contract was not completed. Even though the Italian recording remained available on import only outside Italy for a number of years, it meant that Legge never commissioned an EMI studio recording of Callas in what was one of her most famous roles. And I'm afraid Cetra's recording facilities weren't up to those of EMI at the time.

Thus this classic recording of Callas (albeit with a somewhat second-rate supporting cast) has long suffered from a rather inadequate sound quality which has a rather boxy, enclosed quality to it, with an unsympathetic acoustic and a tendency to peak distortion on the voices. The combination of re-equalisation, distortion reduction, subtle de-noising and the acoustic space of one of the world's finest opera houses that has made up this new 32-bit XR remastering goes a huge way to alleviate these issues, bringing significant sonic improvements that breathe new life and colour into Maria Callas's wonderful performance.

Andrew Rose

Callas and Gobbi's classic 1955 Rigoletto in a superb new XR remaster

"That one recording should continue to hold sway over many other attractive comers after so long is simply a tribute to Callas, Gobbi, Serafin and Walter Legge" - Gramophone, 2015

Between the summer of 1954 and September 1955, the legendary EMI producer Walter Legge recorded no less than six full operas at La Scala, Milan, with Maria Callas in a leading role. Rigoletto was the sixth of these. It is almost impossible to imagine such a productive work-rate today, and yet this amazingly productive period, with Callas at the height of her powers, produced some of the defining recordings of the operatic canon - not least the present offering. The recording team were by now exceptionally familiar with the venue, and in an era of mono recording where the primary concern was capturing the voices and balancing them against the instruments, rather than the stereo presentation of a staged drama that would soon follow, it was no doubt easier to make these recordings than it would later become.

Nevertheless, it took 13 days to record Rigoletto, and in this restoration I've encountered minor differences in recordings made on different days - slightly intrusive traffic noise here, peak distortion there - which I've hopefully dealt with to the listener's satisfaction.Some minor pitch discrepancies have been ironed out. But the main contribution here has been to open out the sound and lift something of a veil from the performance, with Ambient Stereo XR remastering bringing a greater sense of life, clarity and immediacy to the proceedings throughout. Can it really be 60 years since this recording was first released?

Andrew Rose

"PERHAPS THE STORY of “La Forza del Destino” is a bit lugubrious for Easter morning, but not this crackling performance straight from Milan’s La Scala. Tullio Serafin meets Verdi on his own ground in the pace he sets for Maria Meneghini Callas as Leonora, Richard Tucker as Don Alvaro, Nicola Rossi-Lemeni as Padre Guardiano, Carlo Tagliabue as Don Carlo, Elena Nicolai as Preziosilla, Renato Capecchi as Fra Melitone, and Gino del Signore as Trabuco [Angel 3531-C].

This has the live sound of the Scala’s mellow yet brilliant acoustics, the virtuosity of its operatic stature. Orchestra and chorus are topflight, the pacing in the inn scenes is as chameleonic as the score. As always when they are together, Callas' and Rossi-Lemeni occupy a special plane. When they appear you are not just interested, you are involved. Tucker does some superb singing, and Tagliabue rescues himself from a stodgy start to make steely sparks fly from more than swords in their last encounter. Add Nicolai’s [the Italian, not the Greek Nicolaidi] volatile glint as the camp follower, Capecchi’s sulky drollery as the buffo monk, and the peddler’s slyness, and it adds up to a performance rich in characterization and in that reinforced, revitalized line that is the very pulse beat of Verdi. Interesting Benois sketches suggest furies and angels fighting it out."

Chicago Tribune, 10 April 1955


This recording was issued to mixed receptions in 1955. The review from the Chicago Tribune (above) is glowing, whilst The Gramophone's critic in May 1955 moaned about "some uneven singing here, most of it contributed by Callas. Her voice is not too steady, there is an occasional shrillness and insecurity of pitch, and often a definite wobble," though there is praise for the rest of the cast and the recording itself. Interestingly this attitude towards Maria Callas was also to be found in another British review in The Observer.

By the time the recording was reissued on CD in 1987 it seems British critics had come round to a new way of thinking with regard to Maria Callas: "Leonora was a role to which Callas was particularly well attuned. Leonora's ardour, sincerity, and desperate vulnerability are etched by this great artist into her every utterance. Forza begins with a subdued conversation and ends with the great trio and Callas is unforgettable in both." Interestingly the critic goes on to suggest: "Callas is also helped by the new digital remastering, and by CD; her voice never really sat comfortably in 1950s vinyl which bucked and jabbered at her emissions are surely as any dyed-in-the wool canary-fancier. The sound is now clear and true." (Gramophone)

This new Pristine XR remastering further improves on the sound of this classic recording, adding new layers of warmth, depth and complexity to the sound-stage and significantly rounding out the tone of both singers and orchestra.

Andrew Rose

Enter Aida: Callas is a great artist. I believe that at any time she would be so considered and having recently heard her Lucia from the second row of the stalls, I aver that faults or no faults, one is in the presence of a tremendous singing-artist whose will-power and art are brandished at you in such a way that faults "mean" nothing. Often in this Nile scene in the silence under the moon, she will caress a phrase as lovingly as Kreisler or Mischa Elman, fining her voice, colouring it, giving the words a heartfelt meaning which - that hall-mark of his histrionic genius - surprises us. Just as in the sentence in the Forza monastery scene, "Vergin m ' assisti" she gets far more out of the dramatic meaning than her rival Tebaldi, so here too there are dramatic points wonderfully brought off which Tebaldi, ever steady and appealing, hardly makes us notice. Yet Tebaldi is so much steadier, and produces tone which is so infinitely more sympathetic that one cannot in the long run and for repeated playing fail to prefer the suave Italian to the agitating American-Greek soprano. At least so say I, with my ears unable to rid themselves of the memory of the toppling yowl of Mme Callas's high A and high C, even if real tears stood in my eyes as she cried to Tito Gobbi: "Padre, son maladirmi; schiava non son": which is marvellous, like Lucia's "Alfin son tui". an artist, but how incomplete - to alternate ecstasy and irritation!

The Gramophone, January 1956 (excerpt)


Aida was the final magnificent work of Verdi's second period, using every element of his art: sublime large-scale choruses and poignant arias, pageantry, dance, spectacle and exoticism are all here, confirming his status as one of the greatest musical dramatists. The theme is doomed love – Radames, a Captain of the Egyptian guard falls for Aida, an Ethiopian slave; he sings her one of the great tenor arias 'Celeste Aida'; other memorable moments are Aida's 'Ritorna vincitor' and 'O patria mia' and their duet before being entombed alive 'O terra, addio'.

Callas’s Aida is an assumption of total understanding and conviction; the growth from a slave-girl torn between love for her homeland and Radames, to a woman whose feelings transcend life itself, represents one of the greatest operatic undertakings ever committed to disc. Alongside her is Fedora Barbieri, an Amneris palpable in her agonised mixture of love and jealousy – proud yet human. Tucker’s Radames is powerful and Gobbi’s Amonasro quite superb – a portrayal of comparable understanding to set alongside Callas’s Aida.

Tullio Serafin’s reading is in the central Italian tradition of its time. That’s to say, it’s unobtrusively right in matters of tempo, emphasis and phrasing, while occasionally passing indifferent ensemble in the choral and orchestral contribution. Although the recording can’t compete with modern versions (it was never, in fact, a model of clarity), nowhere can it dim the brilliance of the creations conjured up by this classic cast.

Gramophone, May 2015

"The role of Leonora is one in which I have much admired Mme Callas. Her assumption is that of a great lady, as it should be; and in the two big arias I have heard her phrase the music like a virtuoso violinist with a mastery which marked her off from most other Leonoras of the common sort. Most of that grandeur is evident in this recording. But to enjoy Mme Callas you have—if I may commit ah Irishism—to like her in the first place. If you can accept that half closed throat and the occasional curdling skirls and the sagging beat on the top notes, all will seem magical. She again brings to the most hackneyed music a gift of recreating it as if it were being sung for the first time. She feels the sense of words (as, for example, neither Tebaldi nor Milanov seem to sense them at all). On the other hand, considered from a purely tonal angle, the purely sensuous side of her singing offers little here to compare to the ravishing sounds which issue from the Leonoras of Tebaldi (in “Tacea la notte”) or Mme Milanov in the introduction to “D’amor sull’ ali”. But the actual spanning and placing of the phrases are lovely and in the rapid and difficult caballetta to the former aria Mme Callas, who is far more nippy with her shakes and gruppetti, though sticking to a fairly safe pace, shows up as a much more practised coloratura singer than either of her rivals. In the scene with the count which comes after the Miserere, Mme Callas is altogether astonishing in her realisation of the drama in her dynamic phrasing, making her rivals sound merely like also rans in a steeple chase. “Mira d’acerbe lagrime” and the vengeful glee of “Vivra! Contend il giubilo” are perfectly in character. Altogether, provided you like Mme Callas’s strange vocal production, you are likely to forget the other two “complete” Leonoras. Only in one place does she a little disappoint me; that is her moment of amazement in the Convent scene, “E deggio — e posso crederlo?”, not nearly as thrilling as expected. But the working up of the ensemble thereafter is exceptionally clear in this new issue. Indeed I do not recall a Trovatore in which so many of the words came through so clearly...

...But what of Herbert von Karajan’s handling of the score as a whole? Well, I find it superior to Erede (Decca), who sounds laggard and cautious by comparison. But the excitements are not always of a very Verdian kind and von Karajan often seems to drive the singers without at the same time achieving that justifiable rightness that we associate with Toscanini’s Verdi. Cellini in the H.M.V. did one or two questionable things, but von Karajan often whips up the tempo in a way which seems to have no warrant in the score or the nature of the music, as if he simply felt that here was a place where the orchestra might as well assert itself. Equally some of the ralientandos sound, not natural, but grudgingly exaggerated, as if a concession to an absurd fashion. There are few untidy passages. Superficially at least it is a “hot” performance and I don’t expect most listeners to share my reserve in this matter of the true Verdian style not being achieved." 

- The Gramophone, November 1957

"That Callas/Karajan Il trovatore has long been one of the great Verdi recordings" - so wrote Richard Osbourne in Gramophone in 2014, and yet until now it has remained the case that the sound quality EMI/Colombia were offering from these mid-50s mono opera recordings was still significantly behind that of their chief rival, Decca. Once again in this critically-acclaimed series, Pristine's Ambient Stereo XR remastering has significantly transformed the sound quality and listening experience of one of the great Callas opera recordings, bringing to it new life and the wonderfully rich and vibrant sound that was too often lacking in the original. 

Andrew Rose

"This reissue of Ballo is a welcome reminder of the special qualities of its principals . As JBS intimated when it last appeared on LP (6/79), Votto has been under-rated as its conductor: his direction has a truly Verdian élan. This is one of Callas's most compelling assumptions. Certain phrases, such as when she sings "Son di lui", - "I am his" meaning her husband's to Riccardo - remain uniquely accented and convincing. Her Amelia does have more character, presence and sheer spinto quality than that of either soprano on the rival sets. Gobbi is a very different Renato than Bruson, who appears for both Solti (Decca) and Abbado (DG); more incisive, more threatening, but by the same token, rather less smooth in his vocalization; for an ideal "Eri tu", I would want to go far further back in recorded history, to Amato and de Luca. Where Riccardo is concerned, I suppose di Stefano is closer to Pavarotti (SoJti) than to Domingo (Abbado) in giving face to the role. He hasn't so secure a top register as either of his rivals, but my goodness, in the ballata and the love duet he does surpass them both in the involvement and daring of his performance; indeed, I think all three principals are superior to their successors in creating the tension of a live performance as against a studio one. In that respect this is the recording! have always turned to most often, even though in my heart I would have to admit that the Abbado is the more finished and better-produced set. I should add that Barbieri makes a vivid and resourceful Ulrica and Ratti a smiling, pert, if sometimes shrill Oscar.

The DG is, of course, also the more comfortably recorded, although I would suggest that, in its CD manifestation, the EMI is more than respectable in terms of sound. Callas enthusiasts will want this version in any case. Others may find the choice more difficult depending on whether they value the character of individual performances over all-round finish . My own preference is clear; it is for this EMI set."

A.B., The Gramophone, September 1987, review of EMI CD reissue

As we continue our journey through the studio opera recordings made by Maria Callas in the 1950s, in Un ballo in maschera we reach the last of a continuous run of mono opera studio recordings - presented here in Pristine's Ambient Stereo format which, whilst maintaining the central mono sound image, brings space, air and ambience around that image for a more realistic and comfortable listening experience.

Where its major rival, Decca, had pioneered the stereo format, beginning in 1954 despite no domestic reproduction equipment yet offering the new sound, EMI was once again a couple of years or more behind its British counterpart. And whilst the standard of sound engineering was audibly better with each visit to Milan's La Scala Theatre for the annual round of Maria Callas recordings, it still lagged behind the pioneering work of Kenneth Wilkinson and his colleagues at Decca.

This recording nevertheless resides at the sonic peak of the end of the mono era, greatly easing my own work in transforming its sound, through the XR remastering process, into the truly beautiful artefact presented here.

Andrew Rose