The greatest Aida in recorded history- not just the technical ease and skill of the singing, but all the undulations of colour through the voice, changing so swiftly note to note. Her recognition of Aida's defiance when she dives into the chest voice is incredible. She is the only singer to me who never made Aida sound ridiculous or melodrama. Her singing was always with a perfect sense of measure. Theatrical characterisation at its most supreme.
jmiller05 what’s uncanny is that she instinctively found every colour - her throat muscles seemed to be so closely aligned to her emotional/physical state and nervous system that they could instantly transform her mouth cavity into the right shape for expressing the exactly apt emotional shade in the timbre. And it changes performance to performance which tells you there was an improvisatory quality to it all - it wasn’t exactly muscle memory, but muscle responsiveness. stanislawski talked about actors having a perfectly flexible body, free of all tension, to allow any movement which the objective, action and/or emotional state of the actor required the character to produce physically, without the obstruction of the actor. Callas had this ability in her vocal chords.
Great moments of opera So true, and she managed to make every character sound different- so hard to do in singing with the innate vocal chords and timbre, size etc. Her Aida sounds so different from her Tosca or Violetta, or Norma. She had such a clear idea about how to transmit the nuances of character of vocally.
Didn't think I'd be posting an excerpt from Aida as my first Callas posting as it is not my favourite opera, but this very early recording is so incredibly striking that I had to excerpt it. The 27 year old Callas surpasses all rivals and even all her own later versions of this scene in a stunning climax starting at 2:10 - the swell of the voice, and extraordinary vibrancy of the sound is simply breathtaking. At the beginning of the scene her sobs are heartbreaking, and her use of chest register at 1:30 has a crushing darkness to it. Taddei is a perfect scene partner - a cavernous voice, capable of matching Callas' intensity. Verdi's writing in this scene is quite extraordinary harmonically, in its twisting harmonic turns and extension of chord sequences beyond where a classical phrase would end - you see where a lot of the next generation of Verismo composers got their material from, and forget how close late Verdi could get to them as he moved ever further away from the classical formalism of the Bel Canto composers that he was so clearly paying omage to in the earlier works. I often think it's a miracle that Callas had singers around her who didn't sound ridiculous when put next to her... one wonders who amongst today's Verdi singers she could have been paired with satisfactorily.
The greatest Aida in recorded history- not just the technical ease and skill of the singing, but all the undulations of colour through the voice, changing so swiftly note to note. Her recognition of Aida's defiance when she dives into the chest voice is incredible.
She is the only singer to me who never made Aida sound ridiculous or melodrama. Her singing was always with a perfect sense of measure. Theatrical characterisation at its most supreme.
jmiller05 what’s uncanny is that she instinctively found every colour - her throat muscles seemed to be so closely aligned to her emotional/physical state and nervous system that they could instantly transform her mouth cavity into the right shape for expressing the exactly apt emotional shade in the timbre. And it changes performance to performance which tells you there was an improvisatory quality to it all - it wasn’t exactly muscle memory, but muscle responsiveness.
stanislawski talked about actors having a perfectly flexible body, free of all tension, to allow any movement which the objective, action and/or emotional state of the actor required the character to produce physically, without the obstruction of the actor.
Callas had this ability in her vocal chords.
Great moments of opera So true, and she managed to make every character sound different- so hard to do in singing with the innate vocal chords and timbre, size etc. Her Aida sounds so different from her Tosca or Violetta, or Norma. She had such a clear idea about how to transmit the nuances of character of vocally.
Wonderful tempo and singing!!
Didn't think I'd be posting an excerpt from Aida as my first Callas posting as it is not my favourite opera, but this very early recording is so incredibly striking that I had to excerpt it. The 27 year old Callas surpasses all rivals and even all her own later versions of this scene in a stunning climax starting at 2:10 - the swell of the voice, and extraordinary vibrancy of the sound is simply breathtaking. At the beginning of the scene her sobs are heartbreaking, and her use of chest register at 1:30 has a crushing darkness to it. Taddei is a perfect scene partner - a cavernous voice, capable of matching Callas' intensity. Verdi's writing in this scene is quite extraordinary harmonically, in its twisting harmonic turns and extension of chord sequences beyond where a classical phrase would end - you see where a lot of the next generation of Verismo composers got their material from, and forget how close late Verdi could get to them as he moved ever further away from the classical formalism of the Bel Canto composers that he was so clearly paying omage to in the earlier works.
I often think it's a miracle that Callas had singers around her who didn't sound ridiculous when put next to her... one wonders who amongst today's Verdi singers she could have been paired with satisfactorily.
Answering the last question to the best of my knowledge, the answer would be that a decent match would not be possible with current vocal resources.
@@LordMgls yes quite, it was a rhetorical question!
@@greatmomentsofopera7170 I could guess that, but you might be surprised at how many people actually think like that
Divina. Taddei is great here as well.