Maria Callas (December 3, 1923 September 16, 1977)& Leonard Warren (April 21, 1911 - March 4, 1960) sing a tremendously moving and exciting performance of this great duet.
Callas and Warren! Perfection of all possible soprano / baritone duos! One can only imagine how phenomenal the 2 of them would have sounded together in Macbeth, had Bing not fired Callas! That would have been amazing. (I love Rysanek, who did a fine job. But Callas WAS Lady Macbeth!
Yes,this IS 1950-a live performance from Mexico City on 20 June 1950,also with Baum and Simionato. It was her first Leonora,and the complete performance is available on CD,which I have.
thank you for posting this, when I hear it I sometimes feel it would have been great if they had sung together more often, both sound incredible, I love Callas and Warren is one of my faovrites, the other being Gobbi.
Thank you for posting this! Warren sounds substantially different in recordings from live performances than he did on most of his commercial recordings. It helps me to better understand his reputation. Great to hear Callas when she could really sing well!
Familie Riegler Bastianini is wonderful in True color and artistry. I still give the the edge to Warren for soaring effortless line, and untouchable high tones from passaggio up.
Someone here said that it is wonderful to hear Callas without "the horrible wobble" she developped later. That is plain nonsense. Her high notes became wobbly in the sixties. Her medioum and low register never were. Joan kept her high notes but the medium which is the heart of the voice became very shaky and wobbly. And so for so many other "great singers" and again noone points it out. Oh, Madame Gruberova has such lovely high notes. Opera is not only high notes..... But no Callas was "wobbly" when we can all hear that it is simply not true. Yhey hear it because they want to hear it and because someone told them that Callas was so and so.
It is true...so many singers today are way more unsteady than Callas, who always sang with a gorgeous line and may have wobbled on a couple of high notes (in her late career). After 1973, I found it very hard to enjoy a Sutherland performance in the house because of all the unsteadiness in the middle (there were exceptions, occasionally)
@@photo161 Wow. I can only say that countless singers would love to be as "worse" as Callas was between 1956 and, let's say, 1958. There are so many performances during that time, both studio and live, that are beyond great (it would take too long to list them). 1958 was, IMO, her greatest year, and cannot be equaled, let alone surpassed. Many people could never get past Callas' natural timbre, and I respect that. As far as flaws in her technique, well, that topic will be debated forever.
@sillyboydeux the conductor was Herbert von Karajan, and De Luna was Rolando Panerai. This information I got in Piotr Kaminski, Mille et un opéras. The recording was made in 1956 by EMI. OK? All the best
That is true, but not all opinions are equally valid. People are not all experts even though they like to give comments; And now days even those who are considered experts are frauds.
Callas' voice never lost its 'beauty'. It is true that, like many other singers, she had some control problems in mid-career and was mercilessly attacked for them even though her overall performances were still better than most sopranos ever achieve. I heard her live in Chicago in the last tour before her death. Even then her voice, thought obviously more limited than at its peak, was one of the most expressive I have heard in 55 years of operagoing. In addition, she had "glamour" in the ancient mystical sense of "ability to appear as something other than the self". With only a piano accompaniment and dressed in a plain white gown and red satin stole she became: a Spanish princess [Ximene's aria from El Cid; a Sicilian peasant girl [Voi la sapete]; a French noblewoman [Elisabeth in "Don Carlo"' and others as well. Her ability to change before your eyes without the help of sets, costumes, orchestra or cast support was miraculous and I can only imagine what that ability with all of those other supports must have provided to audiences who saw her in fully staged performances.
Absolutely! Callas always sang at the tempo which the composer requested in the score. If you ever think that another singer is not using the correct tempo, go to Callas singing the same passage and find out.
@@wilsonwatt9283 Yes yes yes - in fact I was with a friend the other day listening to 'In quell trine morbide' and he was raving about the soprano - but it was toooooooooo slow - she was more in love with her voice than the intent of the music - I was polite but suffering - Callas's interpretation flows, and well - I could go on forever
I agree with you completely. Stracciari and Ponselle would be my choice for 1st place, followed by Battistini-Barbieri. Each has a right to a career. But for me the 1st place pair sing more naturally and the expressiveness is there. The fire of the voices, the clarity...One can tell one is listening to 2 Americans. Stracciari at a certain point was easily the greatest baritone. He knew sang much better than Ruffo...Ruffo was more like Warren...Warren was better than Ruffo IMHO.Ruffo blew it out
Are they? Warren doesn't sound like in his prime at all to me. I don't hear his signature huge voice. Is it due to the sound quality of the recording? Huh, strange. So this is from 1950?
I really hate saying this... but Warren just wasn't a great di Luna. The role was too Bel Canto for him. His interpretation really suffers from a lack of vocal agility. Just listen to how he slows down the passages well below their marked tempi, and seems to be fighting with the conductor who wants to go faster. Warren was never comfortable with agitato passages. The natural deep beauty of his voice is enough to make his performance memorable, but you need a more agile baritone like Bastianini for Trovatore. Now THERE was the ideal di Luna!
Io la tocco invece... Stracciari enorme ma ormai avanti in carriera con la Ponselle dotata di un timbro magnifico ma con una paura atavica degli acuti...girava per le quinte con la serbente sempre pronta con un bicchiere d'acqua... Inarrivabile era la Tetrazzini e anche lei ormai in età, ma che tecnica e che voce... Gli staccati più belli della storia del disco
Much prefer the Battistini-Barbieri or the Stracciari-Ponselle duets. I find that Warren's voice is just too thick/woofy and Callas' voice too strident for my taste. Even though the older recordings were technologically less sophisticated, the singers voices were clearer and all-around superior.
Both are using so much air pressure to make their voices big...the tones are not sung completely through...legato is kind of thrown out the window. So is the line. The voices are impressive but not centered very well. Both sound less interesting that Björling would have at the same age...technically. He carries the dark timbre down and the vowels do not open like they should in Italian. She looses the support an top and pushes. Famous but not doing what they used to...if you ask me.
None of your observations are accurate. There is nothing about Callas at this point that loses support; her legato is superb. Perhaps you are mistaking lazy singers who fail to sing consonants as having good "legato" but opera is sung drama and here both London and Callas are doing just that. Also, the reference to Bjorling seems out of place as he was a tenor and this is a baritone-soprano duet.
You do know that you can edit your comment by clicking on the vertical ellipses at the far right next to your comment. You criticize a comment as out of place for mentioning Bjoerling who is not present in the duet above, yet you did the same thing by placing Bass-Baritone George London in the duet when it is obvious that it is Leonard Warren doing the honors.
Oddly, Björling called her Leonora, "Perfection". She doesn't lose support on the tops and definitely does not push! On the contrary, she's trying to make that bigass voice sound smaller, so it can move around more freely. She once said that she had sung Leonora predominantly in mezza voce. Even at 6:55, she's killing Warren, and that's not Callas' full-fledged fortissimo! She could have gone louder than that!
You are an completely ignorant half wit who knows nothing about vocal funtion. so you base your idiotic ideas on some stupid info you learned from some dumb source. Don't listen to people like this who are above you in every way. Stick with Dessay and those people.
@MrCafiero I once heard Ingvar Wixell forget the words of "Il balen del suo sorriso" in a MET broadcast. The entire audience started singing along. It was really cute. Just goes to show, you never forget the difficult things, always the simplest passages, where you could just kick yourself afterwards. I once couldn't remember how the Bach c minor Partita began. I had to walk off, look at the music, then come back. The audience just laughed and applauded.
