Comments on: Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana & Leoncavallo: Pagliacci with Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi, Tullio Serafin, Chorus & Orchestra of La Scala, Milan

By: Emma de Soleil

Emma de Soleil — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 04:36:43 +0000

A Santuzza that never screeches but suffers musically, almost as beautiful as de los Angeles’ Santuzza. LOVELY singing in the famous prayer and Callas’ alluring Nedda in “Pagliacci” has never been equalled. Di Stefano is great as Turridu and not SO great as Canio but he still beats all tenors today in this role! BRAVI!
Rating: 5 / 5

By: Mr. Jeffrey Belcher

Mr. Jeffrey Belcher — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 02:34:57 +0000

Absolutely wonderful! I think “Cavalleria Rusticana” has to be among Callas’s best studio recordings.

The music alone is beautiful and captured excellently on this set. The Overture and the Intermezzo are gloriously sweeping.

My Other highlights – The Easter Hymn is thrilling as it builds from a simple beginning to its full-blooded climax. It is immediately followed by “Voi lo Sapete, O Mamma” which finds Callas both at her most heart-breaking and in her finest voice (It is 1954 – the same year as the famous Tosca recording) “No, No Turrido” is another favourite. I really can’t recommend this recording highly enough.

I haven’t listened to “Pagliacci” properly yet but even if it were the worst recording in the world (which I am sure it is not!) this set would be worth buying for “Cavalleria Rusticana” alone.
Rating: 5 / 5

By: Kelly Martino

Kelly Martino — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 01:12:37 +0000

If you want to hear pure terror in the human voice then listen to the repeat of the Columbina ditty in the penultimate scene where Nedda tries to get the show back on the track during Canio’s rage, and then compare it to the first singing the the opening scene of the Comedia. And it all occured in her imagination. She never had direction on how to achieve these miracles of human expression. On the stage she probably would have melted the Chandalier and all the hair in the audience would have been singed. And the good news the Santuzza and Nedda are only moments great theater in a performance that is nothing but great theater. Did Gobbi grow horns? Did di Stefano kill everybody in the stage audience? He certainly scared the wits out of them. Did Panerai make everybody swoon at the sexual passion in his voice. (He was singing to a microphone.)This Nedda is a complex long suffering, two timing wife who knows that she probably going to die and lets everyone know it with the slightest nuance of tonal shift in two presentations of the same commedia del’arte ditty. It’s almost too great a drama coming from speakers. It would have left a live audience in shock. And my opinion we are treated to the most exquisite singing la divina ever recorded. Get it because Callas, Gobbi, et al let us know that Italian verismo can be the greatest drama. And folks it was all in the singers’ imagination because the star never did any of this on the stage. Did I mention Serafin’s contol of all of this art underpinning all of it in the orchestra? I am guessing there was a lot of melted recording tape.
Rating: 5 / 5