# Did you hear Callas live?



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Has anyone in our forum heard Callas live? If so, how did her voice compare to recordings when you heard her in an opera house? I ask because some great singers such as Sutherland and Nilsson supposedly came off sounding very different than they recorded when heard live. I knew someone who heard Callas in Tosca and he said it was the biggest voice he had ever heard.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

I think moody saw Callas live.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

A friend of my mother's saw her quite a few times at Covent Garden. Her debut as Norma was one of the most thrilling events of his opera going life (and he went a lot). He said the voice was absolutely enormous and just rolled out of her with no apparent effort, the vocal fireworks tossed off with ease and fully integrated into the voice. He said that it lost a certain amount of power after the weight loss, but still had incredible penetration.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

GregMitchell said:


> He said that it lost a certain amount of power after the weight loss, but still had incredible penetration.


Does that mean that she was an even better singer when she was overweight?


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

norman bates said:


> Does that mean that she was an even better singer when she was overweight?


I suppose that depends on your priorities. Personally I've always maintained that she reached her greatest equilibrium around 1955, post weight loss, but before the vocal problems really took hold. The voice may have lost a little of its power, but the weight loss freed her up on stage, and some of her greatest recorded performances stem from this time. An abridged list of achievements in 1955 would include

*La Sonnambula* at La Scala in the Visconti production under Bernstein
*Il Turco in Italia* at La Scala in the Zeffirelli production under Gavazzeni
*La Traviata*at La Scala in the Visconti production under Giulini
*Madama Butterfly* studio recording under Karajan
*Rigoletto* studio recording under Serafin (with Gobbi)
*Lucia di Lammermoor* in Berlin under Karajan
*I Puritani* at the Chicago Lyric Opera
*Il Trovatore* at the Chicago Lyric Opera with Bjoerling
*Norma* at La Scala with Del Monaco and Simionato (arguably the best of all her recorded Normas)

It's quite staggering when you think of it.


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## Rossiniano (Jul 28, 2017)

GregMitchell said:


> I suppose that depends on your priorities. Personally I've always maintained that she reached her greatest equilibrium around 1955, post weight loss, but before the vocal problems really took hold. The voice may have lost a little of its power, but the weight loss freed her up on stage, and some of her greatest recorded performances stem from this time. An abridged list of achievements in 1955 would include
> 
> *La Sonnambula* at La Scala in the Visconti production under Bernstein
> *Il Turco in Italia* at La Scala in the Zeffirelli production under Gavazzeni
> ...


It is also my opinion that Callas as an artist peaked in 1954-1955 with 1955 being _the_ stellar year as evidenced by the post quoted above. While the voice lacked the dramatic power and size of 1952 there were very few of the vocal issues that were more than evident by 1958 and were becoming more prevalent as early as 1956. Of course her interpretive abilities were near their peak in 1955 as well. It is not that Callas never worked at improving her interpretive skills, but after 1955 the vocal issues at times impeded her ability to fully bring her dramatic intentions to fruition. As an example of continually refining her interpretations, her Amina in the EMI recording and from Cologne in 1957 is a more elegant (if less flashy) version of what it was under Bernstein at La Scala. Furthermore, genius that she was, she often had the knack of using her vocal shortcomings for dramatic effect. Think of the final heatbrealing final note of "Addio del passato" from La Traviata to see how an imperfection can be turned into quite the asset!

In summary, 1955 represented the best balance between vocal ability and theatricality. We are lucky that we have recordings of most of what is noted above. Would that we could hear what Chicago experienced! Still the reviews tell it all. If I recall correctly one said that she would never sing better. Unfortunately that proved to be quite prophetic!


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

It is nice to hear the responses. Of course you also have her electrical presence, which is a big plus over recordings. Nilsson's voice was notorious for not recording well and Sutherland's did not reflect the size of her voice.I've never heard people say Callas did not record accurately.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

It is nice to hear the responses. Of course you also have her electrical presence, which is a big plus over recordings. Nilsson's voice was notorious for not recording well and Sutherland's did not reflect the size of her voice.I've never heard people say Callas did not record accurately.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> It is nice to hear the responses. Of course you also have her electrical presence, which is a big plus over recordings. Nilsson's voice was notorious for not recording well and Sutherland's did not reflect the size of her voice.I've never heard people say Callas did not record accurately.


My suspicion is that the Callas voice, like that of Nilsson and others with a certain "edge," was best heard in a substantial space with air between the singer and listener. The size of a voice, too, can only be judged in a live situation.


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## Rossiniano (Jul 28, 2017)

Seattleoperafan said:


> It is nice to hear the responses. Of course you also have her electrical presence, which is a big plus over recordings. Nilsson's voice was notorious for not recording well and Sutherland's did not reflect the size of her voice.I've never heard people say Callas did not record accurately.


I never heard Nilsson live, but I can certainly verify that Sutherland's voice was not "phonogenic"! What I never realized until reading the above post was that I can't recall anyone saying the Callas voice "did not record accurately". Indeed the recording can be a dimly recorded pirate or an up close studio recording and one can HEAR how the voice changed over the years. That alone seems to indicate that the microphones were always able to capture the essence of her voice.

I agree with Woodduck that it is difficult to judge the size of a voice when not heard in an acoustic space. Still, we all hear things diffetently, but to my ears in 1950 the voice sounds "fat" and large and a decade later sounds more threadbare yet still retaining a penetrating characteristic. In the 1960's I don't hear a BIG voice. However, like hearing someone like basso Nicolai Ghiaurov live very late in his career, one knows that they are in the presence of what once was an important voice. The voice might be a shadow of itself, but it still has a certain authoritive quality. Of course with Callas I am basing this on recordings. It makes me hate myself for not attempting to hear her live when I could have done so in the years of her final recitals. Still, all happens for the best and at the time I don't think I would have been able to handle the experience.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Rossiniano said:


> I never heard Nilsson live, but I can certainly verify that Sutherland's voice was not "phonogenic"! What I never realized until reading the above post was that I can't recall anyone saying the Callas voice "did not record accurately". Indeed the recording can be a dimly recorded pirate or an up close studio recording and one can HEAR how the voice changed over the years. That alone seems to indicate that the microphones were always able to capture the essence of her voice.


We can only speculate, but I see no contradiction here. I have the feeling that most voices sound significantly different from the stage of a large opera house than they do coming through the recording process. Heck, they sound different in different recording studios and on different record labels. It's entirely possible that recordings didn't flatter Callas, as they generally didn't flatter Nilsson. I heard the latter three times in the '70s, and was surprised to find her timbre rounder and darker than it sounded coming from my speakers. I could attribute this partly to age - most of her best recordings are from the early-to-mid '60s - but on recordings her voice didn't darken notably and indeed had become harder and steelier by the time she returned to the Met as Elektra in 1980. It makes perfect sense that a good acoustic can round off a voice's harsher overtones, and Callas had her share of those. What you call the "essence" of a voice wouldn't necessarily change, depending, I suppose, on what one considers its essence to be. No acoustic could conceal the unique and haunting colors of the Callas instrument.

I was 16 when Callas sang her last Tosca at the Met. If I'd known more I'd have slept on the sidewalk to attend.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

That is why I posted this. Other than my friend in his mid 70's who heard her in Tosca, I know of no one who heard her live and never read of one on a forum.With the other greats you often read people saying they sound different in a house. Am I wrong, but since she didn't sing at the Met much I speculate that she sang more in Europe. I do know of the Dallas Medea.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

From my own experience - recordings of singers inc choral are poor substitutes to the real thing. 

Recs of orch and instrumental music is a fair substitute.


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## Annied (Apr 27, 2017)

I don't think it's just down to the recording process.

Performing in front of an audience brings out the best in some singers. I was a big fan of the baritone Vladimir Chernov and saw him live several times. The studio recordings I have of his performances, while perfectly adequate, never quite live up to his live performances. The frisson of performing live can definitely work to the advantage of some performers, as I think it did in Chernov's case, but I can also see that it could inhibit others.

(Whether that has any bearing on Maria Callas, I don't know, just my twopennyworth.)


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## davidglasgow (Aug 19, 2017)

Seattleoperafan said:


> That is why I posted this. Other than my friend in his mid 70's who heard her in Tosca, I know of no one who heard her live and never read of one on a forum.With the other greats you often read people saying they sound different in a house. Am I wrong, but since she didn't sing at the Met much I speculate that she sang more in Europe. I do know of the Dallas Medea.


It might be worth checking out the archive search on Opera-L ([email protected]) since it goes back to the mid 1990s and at that point there were more posters able to draw on what were then memories of 30 years earlier - I see ones in particular by Mike Richter and Charles Handelman who contributed a lot to that forum, I'm sure there were others as well.

In on post "Re: On seeing Callas" Mike Richter made the observation 


> By the way, Callas live was to Callas on video what Callas on video is to
> Callas on audio. In other words, she (and Nilsson and Gedda and Vickers and
> ...) routinely provided in the house experiences that cannot be recorded.


Link:http://listserv.bccls.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9510E&L=OPERA-L&P=R945&D=0


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

davidglasgow said:


> It might be worth checking out the archive search on Opera-L ([email protected]) since it goes back to the mid 1990s and at that point there were more posters able to draw on what were then memories of 30 years earlier - I see ones in particular by Mike Richter and Charles Handelman who contributed a lot to that forum, I'm sure there were others as well.
> 
> In on post "Re: On seeing Callas" Mike Richter made the observation
> 
> Link:http://listserv.bccls.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9510E&L=OPERA-L&P=R945&D=0


Thanks for reminding me of that group. It used to be the main forum and I posted there a lot.


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## RossiniRules (Aug 3, 2018)

I saw her at Boston's Symphony Hall on her tour with Di Stefano. He cancelled, she didn't. Met her afterwards and I fell in love.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

RossiniRules said:


> I saw her at Boston's Symphony Hall on her tour with Di Stefano. He cancelled, she didn't. Met her afterwards and I fell in love.


I lived in Boston during that "comeback" concert, but I didn't want to hear what had become of her voice. I've since watched ecxerpts of those concerts with Di Stefano. I'm unlikely to do so again.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I lived in Boston during that "comeback" concert, but I didn't want to hear what had become of her voice. I've since watched ecxerpts of those concerts with Di Stefano. I'm unlikely to do so again.


I'm the same. I find it altogether too upsetting.


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2018)

I never saw Callas, but I saw Nilsson twice (met her once and had a lovely chat and got her autograph!). Her voice was huge and nearly pinned us in our seats at times. It never lost its beauty though, no matter how loudly she sang.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

GregMitchell said:


> I'm the same. I find it altogether too upsetting.


Her life was like a Greek tragedy. A talented novelist could not have written a more thrilling and poignant story. One can only imagine what hearing her from the 40's thru the mid 50's would have been like live!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

GregMitchell said:


> I'm the same. I find it altogether too upsetting.


Her life was like a Greek tragedy. A talented novelist could not have written a more thrilling and poignant story. One can only imagine what hearing her from the 40's thru the mid 50's would have been like live!!!!!!!!!!!


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## HelpMeUnderstand (Aug 5, 2018)

No, Alas, i have not.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

RossiniRules said:


> Met her afterwards and I fell in love.


Don't be a tease. Do share more.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Belowpar said:


> Don't be a tease. Do share more.


What more could there be? Do you think she reciprocated?


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Im not DAT old...Wish i had a time machine tho!:lol:


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