# Maria Callas in Mexico



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Robert Lawrence takes aim at Maria Callas in a 1952 Season in Mexico for this article. This is before her worldwide fame, a time when she was being judged as an up and coming singer, not having sung yet at the Metropolitan Opera, the mark of success for an American reviewer in those days. Callas had yet to achieve the huge success she had at Chicago Lyric, at Covent Garden and at La Scala (though she'd opened the season there in 1951 in *I Vespri Siciliani*).

Please click twice to augment the jpegs.


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting and rather prescient, given our benefit of hindsight.

I guess the part where he thinks she can best be described as a _lirico spinto_ with agility will be a bit controversial given that the _assoluta_ moniker is still associated with her.

Also, I think it was Zinka Milanov who came to a different conclusion about repertoire, saying that Callas was best suited to the roles like Gilda and Lucia and made a mistake singing the heavier rep, whereas Lawrence suggests pretty much the opposite: that those roles are a bit of a stretch.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Revitalized Classics said:


> Thanks for sharing. Very interesting and rather prescient, given our benefit of hindsight.
> 
> I guess the part where he thinks she can best be described as a _lirico spinto_ with agility will be a bit controversial given that the _assoluta_ moniker is still associated with her.
> 
> Also, I think it was Zinka Milanov who came to a different conclusion about repertoire, saying that Callas was best suited to the roles like Gilda and Lucia and made a mistake singing the heavier rep, whereas Lawrence suggests pretty much the opposite: that those roles are a bit of a stretch.


Thanks for responding!

I rather think the _Soprano Assoluto _ term was not generally known then - it was later that scholars and musicianly critics looked for accolades in other terms to describe her. Miss Milanov compared everyone to herself who, as a dramatic soprano in the old fashioned term, couldn't really fathom coloratura for as large a voice as Callas's was then.

Elvira de Hidalgo heard "torrents of sound" in the large sense and taught Callas to contain it and also taught her agility despite the heavy voice, and both she and Callas ignored the unfeasibility of it. (In parallel, Richard Bonynge taught Sutherland the same).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I can't think of many things more tedious than rehashing debates about what vocal category Callas - or anyone, for that matter - should be shoehorned into. In music, I prefer French horns to shoehorns.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I can't think of many things more tedious than rehashing debates about what vocal category Callas - or anyone, for that matter - should be shoehorned into. In music, I prefer French horns to shoehorns.


I agree but I do think it's interesting to see how critics back then had difficulty "placing" Callas. She was something quite different and critics had difficulty with her unusual combination of vocal size and flexibility. Thank heavens she never listened to them or she might never have had the career she had.

Even the famous De Sabata recording of *Tosca* was not universally acclaimed when it was first issued, Alec Robertson comparing Callas's assumption of the title role unfavourably to Tebaldi's _more dramatic_ performance in the Erede recording. He died in 1982. I wonder if he ever ate his words. Dyneley Hussey made the strange observation that much of Callas's singing was unrhythmical, which, given Callas's legendary musical exactitude, now seems entirely incredible.


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## Andante Cantabile (Feb 26, 2020)

The review of Callas' 1952 Mexico City performances by Robert Lawrence had been discussed on Opera-L last year. Two subscribers there raised questions over his credentials and credibility as a reviewer of the work concerned, not so much his opinion of Callas:



> Cited from the Obituary of Robert Lawrence in the New York Times (August 11, 1981):
> 
> "Overriding all these and other activities was Mr. Lawrence's enthusiastic championing of French opera at a time when this repertory had become unfashionable; the formation of the Friends of French Opera in 1962 was the realization of a lifelong ambition. The group's first concert performance took place in Carnegie Hall on Nov. 11, 1962, under Mr. Lawrence's direction, a potpourri of selections from unfamiliar French works by Dukas, Meyerbeer, Massenet and Berlioz. Revivals of Massenet."
> 
> ...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Tsaraslondon said:


> Dyneley Hussey made the strange observation that much of Callas's singing was *unrhythmical*, which, given Callas's legendary musical exactitude, now seems entirely incredible.


No more incredible than the name "Dyneley Hussey." Male, female, or something indefinable?

The only way I can translate "unrhythmical" as applied to Callas is " not rigidly metrical." Perhaps Dyneley was employed as a school marching band leader. "No, Simon, your LEFT foot! LEFT foot! Now your RIGHT foot! Don't be _unrhythmical!_ Left, right, left, right...!"


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Tsaraslondon said:


> I agree but I do think it's interesting to see how critics back then had difficulty "placing" Callas. She was something quite different and critics had difficulty with her unusual combination of vocal size and flexibility. Thank heavens she never listened to them or she might never have had the career she had.
> 
> Even the famous De Sabata recording of *Tosca* was not universally acclaimed when it was first issued, Alec Robertson comparing Callas's assumption of the title role unfavourably to Tebaldi's _more dramatic_ performance in the Erede recording. He died in 1982. I wonder if he ever ate his words. Dyneley Hussey made the strange observation that much of Callas's singing was unrhythmical, which, given Callas's legendary musical exactitude, now seems entirely incredible.


Callas unrhythmical!!!!!!!!! Heavens. She was the operatic equivalent of Dionne Warwick, both of whom excelled at hitting their notes at the precise perfect moment. Prime example: the high note in the Lucia sextet. Always dead center where the beat should be. Very effective.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Seattleoperafan said:


> She [Callas] was the operatic equivalent of Dionne Warwick.


Never thought I'd hear that! Not that I'd previously paid much attention to Dionne Warwick.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> No more incredible than the name "Dyneley Hussey." Male, female, or something indefinable?


According to Wikipedia,



> [Dyneley] Hussey was born in India in 1893 and was the son of Colonel Charles Edward Hussey. He was educated at St Cyprian's School Eastbourne, The King's School Canterbury and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He served in World War I as a lieutenant in the Thirteenth Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, and published a book of war poems. Two of his most celebrated war poems are "An Oxford Retrospect" and "Courage".[1] He then spent five years in the finance department at the Admiralty.
> 
> He became an author and journalist and in 1923 was writing art criticism.[2] However his main interest was music and he wrote several works on opera. He was music critic for The Times from 1923 to 1946 and also wrote successively for the Saturday Review, Weekend Review, and Spectator. During World War II he again took on an administrative post at the Admiralty. In 1946, he was chosen to deal with music on the BBC Third Programme and became music critic of The Listener, remaining until 1960.[3] He wrote several articles for the Musical Times under the title "The Musician's Gramophone".


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Tsaraslondon said:


> According to Wikipedia,


Thanks. I'm now prepared to play Jeopardy.


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