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The Callas Legacy: The Complete Guide to Her Recordings on Compact Disc
This detailed analysis of every record made by Maria Callas examines the development of her art from her first recordings in 1949 to the last in 1977.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 3, 2023
The greatest, born on this day (2 December) 100 years ago. All my life I’ve been unapologetically bowing to the shrine of Maria Callas, an American-born Greek soprano. I've listened and admired many great sopranos, both on records and live in opera houses, but she still remains my definitive Norma, Violetta, Medea, Tosca, Lucia, Gioconda...
My first opera record was a 78 rpm disc with Callas singing Violetta’s “Addio del passato" on one side and Gioconda’s Suicidio!" on another. I got it from my mom when I was about 6-7 years old. At that tender age, I certainly did not understand what exactly drew me to it, but for the first time I heard someone singing a "song" (in a child's vocabulary) behind which I sensed there was a "story" I wanted to know more about. Had it not been for Callas' voice, in all its vocal splendor, dramatic projection, and human frailty, it would not have opened up this entire new world for me. That's how I instinctively fell in love with opera. I played this record over and over again until it became practically unlistenable by the time I was in my early teens. And I’ve been playing her records ever since. Her best vocal years were short, spanning only slightly over a decade, but covering dozens of roles on numerous live and studio recordings for a lifetime of listening.
Her complex personality, turbulent (and ultimately lonely) life, and her great vocal artistry have been too much of a challenge for writers. Her biographies hardly do her any justice and the worst are the best-selling ones, from the gossipy older one by Arianna Stassinopoulos (aka Huffington) to the most recent travesty by Lyndsy Spence. Ignore them. Instead, read this book by John Ardoin that masterfully presents her vocalism on all of her complete opera recordings (including the live performances, usually her best on records) and a few official recital discs. It’s a classic reference for good reasons. As for her life, try to find an hour-long tape recording when she unburdened herself for the record to the same John Ardoin during her visit to Dallas in 1968, the year after the love of her life (Onassis), for whom she sacrificed 8 years of her career, dumped her for another woman ((Jackie O). It was the beginning of her end. She died in 1977 when she was only 53 … her heart failed her. Yes, she was the greatest who lived the Greek tragedy both on and off the stage.
My first opera record was a 78 rpm disc with Callas singing Violetta’s “Addio del passato" on one side and Gioconda’s Suicidio!" on another. I got it from my mom when I was about 6-7 years old. At that tender age, I certainly did not understand what exactly drew me to it, but for the first time I heard someone singing a "song" (in a child's vocabulary) behind which I sensed there was a "story" I wanted to know more about. Had it not been for Callas' voice, in all its vocal splendor, dramatic projection, and human frailty, it would not have opened up this entire new world for me. That's how I instinctively fell in love with opera. I played this record over and over again until it became practically unlistenable by the time I was in my early teens. And I’ve been playing her records ever since. Her best vocal years were short, spanning only slightly over a decade, but covering dozens of roles on numerous live and studio recordings for a lifetime of listening.
Her complex personality, turbulent (and ultimately lonely) life, and her great vocal artistry have been too much of a challenge for writers. Her biographies hardly do her any justice and the worst are the best-selling ones, from the gossipy older one by Arianna Stassinopoulos (aka Huffington) to the most recent travesty by Lyndsy Spence. Ignore them. Instead, read this book by John Ardoin that masterfully presents her vocalism on all of her complete opera recordings (including the live performances, usually her best on records) and a few official recital discs. It’s a classic reference for good reasons. As for her life, try to find an hour-long tape recording when she unburdened herself for the record to the same John Ardoin during her visit to Dallas in 1968, the year after the love of her life (Onassis), for whom she sacrificed 8 years of her career, dumped her for another woman ((Jackie O). It was the beginning of her end. She died in 1977 when she was only 53 … her heart failed her. Yes, she was the greatest who lived the Greek tragedy both on and off the stage.
December 10, 2023
As part of the research for a longer piece on Maria Callas, I wanted a reliable reference guide for her recordings. I approached this book gingerly. It’s an established part of the body of work devoted to Callas by the vocal and 'gramophone' critic (they are mostly all male, mostly all of a certain age, or writing as if they are, and always have been).
The criticism they produce bridges two linked categories: writing about the vocal aspects of Callas' performances and then about the history of the recordings themselves. It's remarkable to me that a lot of this work hasn't been called out for its assumption of an apparent authority, which is in fact not earned. At its most basic, the approach is to take some incontestable musical fact - e.g. that an aria ends on a certain note or a tempo marking in the score and then add some ridiculously subjective comment about Callas' voice and/or performance, and whether the listener should think of that as ‘good’ or bad’. If such comments can also be then pinned to the timeline of her life, so it coincides with weight loss in the 1950s or her relationship with Aristotle Onassis, all the better!
Unfortunately in a lot of the writing there is also the unignorable and unpleasant background music of male critics attempting to write about a female artist in a certain way, often seeing her as their own personal goddess. Take a very mild example of some of this in the Foreword to Ardoin's book by Terrence McNally:
'The year was 1953, the recording was Lucia di Lammermoor...I was ...a dreamer, and I thought she was singing just for me. I still do.'
An essay I need hardly add that raises Callas' 'physical beauty' on the very next page.
It's an inauspicious start. To be fair it’s Ardoin’s book and he mostly avoids this sort of thing, devoting himself instead to just basic bad writing and questionable opinions, very much in line with the school of criticism I have just mentioned.
The writing I think comes from a desire for his readers to see him as Solomonistic. Wrong-headed, clichéd pronouncements adorn every single page. Opening the book (genuinely) at random we see his comments on the 1953 Tosca (which has the credible claim of being one of the greatest opera recordings ever made):
'All the dramatic ingredients...are balanced and covered with a plenitude of expression...Her voice is dark but not unduly covered, full but not thick; through it, words glow and live'
and at the end of the review a helpful (not) summing up
'But opera being an arena that makes its own rules, the winner is none of the three [i.e. Callas, Gobbi, de Sabata - di Stefano doesn't come into to it and is only mentioned for his 'charm'] but a fourth - Puccini.'
There is so much one can say here (and would rather not). A quick enumeration: the miserably four-square writing, the well-trodden and profoundly meaningless comments on the voice (how is it that such ludicrously inexpressive and virtually meaningless terms like ‘thick’, ‘covered’ etc have somehow become commonly accepted adjectives when writing about Callas and vocal performances more generally?), the entitled way in which judgment is passed and the pathetic view of opera as a boxing match in which the 'contestants' slug it out.
My second random page opening is Ardoin on the 1952 live recording of 'Macbeth'. This fourth edition of the book dates from 2004, so long before the most recent remasterings, but I don't think the sonic quality of whichever pressing he was using has anything to do with his apparent inability to parse what he is listening to. I will just take two examples.
First, he criticises Callas' spoken narration at the start of Act 1, Scene 2 as being 'leaden' and later in the book compares it unfavourably with the same scene in Callas' later recording as part of an album of Verdi arias in 1958. He basically misundertands what Callas was attempting to do here in the theatre, which is to manage in a psychologically coherent way, the jump from speech to recitative to aria. If the spoken narration here starts in a low key almost disinterested manner, that makes profound dramatic sense and to anyone with ears to hear, works brilliantly. The studio recording is of course different - would you want a solo spoken voice to sound the same in 'production terms' in the studio as in the theatre? Of course not. Give Callas credit for realising what works in each context and for trying in the studio something she could not in the opera house.
Second, Ardoin criticises Victor de Sabata, the conductor for a 'dramatically divisive' tempo in the Act 3 sleepwalking scene, as if de Sabata's primary concern was posterity rather than creating thrilling dramatic tension on a particular night in the theatre. For me, this not only works but is entirely congruent with the rest of his approach and Callas responds magnificently (she and de Sabata would of course have discussed and rehearsed this extensively). Again the comparison with the same aria in that 1958 recording is simply invalid.
Let's look at the writing here. How does the following score on your cliché meter?
'Her voice creates scenery for...the mind's theater'
and for pomposity it's hard to beat this (a summing up of the perceived defects of the sleepwalking scene ):
'... a totality has not been achieved'
A totality has certainly not been achieved in this book for me.
In his Preface Ardoin says:
'Some might wish to attach the tag "discography" to this book; I hope not'
It is a real irony that the only conceivable use of this book is to use it as a 'discography' and ignore most of the words.
The criticism they produce bridges two linked categories: writing about the vocal aspects of Callas' performances and then about the history of the recordings themselves. It's remarkable to me that a lot of this work hasn't been called out for its assumption of an apparent authority, which is in fact not earned. At its most basic, the approach is to take some incontestable musical fact - e.g. that an aria ends on a certain note or a tempo marking in the score and then add some ridiculously subjective comment about Callas' voice and/or performance, and whether the listener should think of that as ‘good’ or bad’. If such comments can also be then pinned to the timeline of her life, so it coincides with weight loss in the 1950s or her relationship with Aristotle Onassis, all the better!
Unfortunately in a lot of the writing there is also the unignorable and unpleasant background music of male critics attempting to write about a female artist in a certain way, often seeing her as their own personal goddess. Take a very mild example of some of this in the Foreword to Ardoin's book by Terrence McNally:
'The year was 1953, the recording was Lucia di Lammermoor...I was ...a dreamer, and I thought she was singing just for me. I still do.'
An essay I need hardly add that raises Callas' 'physical beauty' on the very next page.
It's an inauspicious start. To be fair it’s Ardoin’s book and he mostly avoids this sort of thing, devoting himself instead to just basic bad writing and questionable opinions, very much in line with the school of criticism I have just mentioned.
The writing I think comes from a desire for his readers to see him as Solomonistic. Wrong-headed, clichéd pronouncements adorn every single page. Opening the book (genuinely) at random we see his comments on the 1953 Tosca (which has the credible claim of being one of the greatest opera recordings ever made):
'All the dramatic ingredients...are balanced and covered with a plenitude of expression...Her voice is dark but not unduly covered, full but not thick; through it, words glow and live'
and at the end of the review a helpful (not) summing up
'But opera being an arena that makes its own rules, the winner is none of the three [i.e. Callas, Gobbi, de Sabata - di Stefano doesn't come into to it and is only mentioned for his 'charm'] but a fourth - Puccini.'
There is so much one can say here (and would rather not). A quick enumeration: the miserably four-square writing, the well-trodden and profoundly meaningless comments on the voice (how is it that such ludicrously inexpressive and virtually meaningless terms like ‘thick’, ‘covered’ etc have somehow become commonly accepted adjectives when writing about Callas and vocal performances more generally?), the entitled way in which judgment is passed and the pathetic view of opera as a boxing match in which the 'contestants' slug it out.
My second random page opening is Ardoin on the 1952 live recording of 'Macbeth'. This fourth edition of the book dates from 2004, so long before the most recent remasterings, but I don't think the sonic quality of whichever pressing he was using has anything to do with his apparent inability to parse what he is listening to. I will just take two examples.
First, he criticises Callas' spoken narration at the start of Act 1, Scene 2 as being 'leaden' and later in the book compares it unfavourably with the same scene in Callas' later recording as part of an album of Verdi arias in 1958. He basically misundertands what Callas was attempting to do here in the theatre, which is to manage in a psychologically coherent way, the jump from speech to recitative to aria. If the spoken narration here starts in a low key almost disinterested manner, that makes profound dramatic sense and to anyone with ears to hear, works brilliantly. The studio recording is of course different - would you want a solo spoken voice to sound the same in 'production terms' in the studio as in the theatre? Of course not. Give Callas credit for realising what works in each context and for trying in the studio something she could not in the opera house.
Second, Ardoin criticises Victor de Sabata, the conductor for a 'dramatically divisive' tempo in the Act 3 sleepwalking scene, as if de Sabata's primary concern was posterity rather than creating thrilling dramatic tension on a particular night in the theatre. For me, this not only works but is entirely congruent with the rest of his approach and Callas responds magnificently (she and de Sabata would of course have discussed and rehearsed this extensively). Again the comparison with the same aria in that 1958 recording is simply invalid.
Let's look at the writing here. How does the following score on your cliché meter?
'Her voice creates scenery for...the mind's theater'
and for pomposity it's hard to beat this (a summing up of the perceived defects of the sleepwalking scene ):
'... a totality has not been achieved'
A totality has certainly not been achieved in this book for me.
In his Preface Ardoin says:
'Some might wish to attach the tag "discography" to this book; I hope not'
It is a real irony that the only conceivable use of this book is to use it as a 'discography' and ignore most of the words.
August 17, 2012
If you are a true fan of Maria Callas, La Divina--if you love her singing just slightly less than life itself, for example or if you have spent a few weeks and a few hundred dollars trying to track down a complete set of pirated tapes from the 1950 Mexico City "La Traviata"--you probably already have an edition of this book since it is a compilation of every published recording extant of Callas with analysis by premier Callas listener John Ardoin.
April 17, 2013
It was very interesting but not really anything more than a resource. If i could hear each recording as I read the review/guide - that would have been great! As it is, if you are looking for a good recording, this is a great resource. If you have some Callas recordings, most likely you already have the ones you want so it may be a source of interest.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews