# Callas Norma Question



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I like the early Callas Normas. Vocally she was at her prime before her weight loss around 53. Did she ever eliminate the high D at the end of the Act II trio or did she maintain it after her voice went into it's serious decline. The bottom and middle of the voice remained good till the end, but the top became for me unlistenable towards the end of the 50's.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

The top D is still there in the La Scala *Norma* of 1955, in my opinion, and that of most Callas devotees, the very best of all her recorded Normas. This is post weight loss, but the note rings out freely and is as solid as a rock. It's also there in the Rome radio broadcast from earlier that year, when she is again in fabulous voice, though it's a little less responsive than it would be in Milan later the same year.

The La Scala performance is the last complete Callas recording of *Norma* we have until the studio one of 1960, when she doesn't add a top D, but nor did she in the 1954 studio recording.

The voice in those 1955 Normas is definitely not a voice in decline, nor is it in the *Anna Bolena* of 1957, when she caps the Act I finale with another ringing top D, or in the Cologne *La Sommanbula*, when she not only adds a cadenza taking her up to a top Eb, but is able to to effect a diminuendo on this stratospheric note before descending down the most perfect chromatic scale, and all in one breath. Not even Sutherland ever managed such a feat!


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I love having the videos but at that point in her career her high notes were unendurable for me. As long as an aria didn't go about an A I could enjoy it. The middle and lower voice didn't seem to be affected by the loss of support from her weight loss.


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