Verdi: Il trovatore (1956 - Karajan) - Callas Remastered Maria Callas

• Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): Il trovatore, Act 1
• 1All'erta! All'erta! (Ferrando, Chorus)03:02
• 2Di due figli vivea padre beato (Ferrando, Chorus)00:45
• 3Abbietta zingara, fosca vegliarda! (Ferrando, Chorus)03:35
• 4Brevi e tristi giorni visse (Ferrando, Coro)01:57
• 5Sull'orlo dei tetti (Ferrando, Chorus)01:21
• 6Che piu t'arresti? (Ines, Leonora)02:17
• 7Tacea la notte placida (Leonora)03:34
• 8Quanto narrasti di turbamento m'ha piena I'alma! (Ines, Leonora)00:50
• 9Di tale amor (Leonora, Ines)01:41
• 10Tace la notte! (Count di Luna)01:49
• 11Il Trovator! lo fremo!...Deserto sulla terra (Count di Luna, Manrico)01:45
• 12Anima mia!....Piu dell'usato (Leonora, Count di Luna, Manrico)01:59
• 13Di geloso amor sprezzato (Count di Luna, Leonora, Manrico)02:41
• Il trovatore, Act 2
• 14Vedi le fosche notturne (Chorus)02:59
• 15Stride la vampa! (Azucena)02:41
• 16Mesta ? la tua canzon! (Chorus, Azucena, Manrico, Old Gypsy)02:02
• 17Soli or siamo (Manrico, Azucena)01:01
• 18Condotta all'era in ceppi (Azucena, Manrico)04:51
• 19Non son tuo figlio! (Manrico, Azucena)02:28
• 20Mal reggendo all'aspro assalto (Manrico, Azucena)03:09
• 21L'usato messo Ruiz invia! ... Mi vendica! (Manrico, Azucena, Messenger)01:26
• 22Perigliarti ancor languente (Azucena, Manrico)02:30
• 23Tutto ? deserto (Count di Luna, Ferrando)01:34
• 24Il balen del suo sorriso (Count di Luna)03:15
• 25Qual suono! Oh ciel! (Count di Luna, Ferrando, Coro)00:50
• 26Per me ora fatale (Count di Luna, Ferrando, Chorus)02:51
• 27Ah! se l'error t'ingombra (Chorus, Count di Luna, Ferrando)02:01
• 28Perch? piangete?...O dolci amiche (Leonora, Ines, Count di Luna, Chorus)02:17
• 29E deggio e posso crederlo? (Leonora, Count di Luna, Manrico, Ines, Chorus, Ferrando, Ruiz)04:51
• Il trovatore, Act 3
• 30Or co'dadi, mi fra poco (Chorus, Ferrando)04:28
• 31In braccio al mio rival! (Count di Luna, Ferrando, Chorus, Azucena)02:12
• 32Giorni poveri vivea (Azucena, Count di Luna, Ferrando, Chorus)03:08
• 33Deh! rallentate, o barbari (Azucena, Count di Luna, Ferrando, Chorus)02:07
• 34Quale d'armi fragor (Leonora,Manrico)02:02
• 35Ah si, ben mio, coll'essere io tuo (Manrico)02:53
• 36L'onda de'suoni mistici pura discenda al cor! (Leonora, Manrico, Ruiz)01:29
• 37Di quella pira l'orrendo foco (Manrico, Ruiz, Chorus)03:21
• Il trovatore, Act 4
• 38Siam giunti; ecco la torre (Ruiz, Leonora)03:06
• 39D'amor sull'ali rosee (Leonora)04:02
• 40Miserere...Quel suon, quelle preci (Chorus, Leonora, Manrico)04:54
• 41Di te! Di te! scordami di te (Leonora)02:33
• 42Udiste? (Count di Luna, Leonora)01:47
• 43Mira, d'acerbe lagrime (Leonora, Count di Luna)02:19
• 44Conte!...Ne bastil! (Leonora, Count di Luna)01:14
• 45Colui vivra ... Vivra, contende il giubilo (Leonora, Count di Luna)02:25
• 46Madre, non dormi? (Manrico, Azucena)05:29
• 47Si, la stanchezza m'opprime (Azucena, Manrico)01:19
• 48Ai nostri monti ritorneremo (Azucena, Manrico)02:05
• 49Che! Non m'inganna! (Manrico, Leonora)01:08
• 50Parlar non vuoi!...Ha quest'infame l'amor venduto (Manrico, Leonora)03:01
• 51Ti scosta! (Manrico, Leonora)01:06
• 52Prima che d'altri vivere (Leonora, Manrico, Count di Luna, Azucena)03:32
• Total Runtime02:09:42

Info for Verdi: Il trovatore (1956 - Karajan) - Callas Remastered

Like Norma, the role of Leonora in Il trovatore demands both bel canto finesse and considerable vocal and dramatic weight, but Callas sang it only some 20 times. This recording – in which she, Fedora Barbieri, Giuseppe di Stefano and Roland Panerai constitute a suitably impressive quartet of principals – marked her farewell to the complete role and also her final collaboration with Herbert von Karajan.

“Callas and Karajan took the world by the ears in the 1950s with this Il trovatore. Leonora was one of Callas's finest stage roles, and this recording is wonderfully intense, with a dark concentrated loveliness of sound in the principal arias that puts one in mind of Muzio or Ponselle at their best. Walter Legge always managed to team Callas with the right conductor for the work in question. Often it was Serafin, but Karajan in Il trovatore is utterly compelling.

This opera, like Beethoven's Seventh Symphony and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, is one of music's great essays in sustained rhythmic intensity; dramatically it deals powerfully in human archetypes. All this is realised by the young Karajan with that almost insolent mastery of score and orchestra which made him such a phenomenon at this period of is career. There are some cuts, but, equally, some welcome inclusions (such as the second verse of 'Di quella pira', sung by di Stefano with his own unique kind of slancio). Although the EMI sound is very good, one or two climaxes suggest that in the heat of the moment, the engineer, Robert Beckett, let the needle run into the red and you might care to play the set in mono to restore that peculiar clarity and homogeneity of sound which are the mark of Legge's finest productions of the mono era. But whatever you do don't miss this set.” (Gramophone Classical Music Guide)

Maria Callas, soprano (Leonora)
Giuseppe di Stefano, tenor (Manrico)
Rolando Panerai, baritone (Il Conte di Luna)
Nicola Zaccaria, bass (Ferrando)
Luisa Villa, soprano (Ines)
Renato Ercolani, tenor (Ruiz, Un messo)
Giulio Mauri, bass (Un vecchio zingaro)
Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala Milan
Herbert von Karajan, conductor

Digitally remastered

Maria Callas
was born to a Greek family in New York in 1923. Her vocal training took place in Athens, where her teacher was the coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who had sung with Enrico Caruso and Feodor Chaliapin. After early performances in Greece, Callas’s international career was launched in 1947 when she performed the title role in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda at the Arena di Verona in Italy.

Her voice defied simple classification and her artistic range was extraordinary. In her early twenties she sang such heavy dramatic roles as Gioconda, Turandot, Brünnhilde and Isolde, but over the course of her career her most famous roles came to be: Bellini’s Norma and Amina (La sonnambula); Verdi’s Violetta (La traviata); Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena, Cherubini’s Medea and Puccini’s Tosca. Though her timbre was not always conventionally beautiful, Callas’s musicianship and phrasing were in a class of their own. She brought characters to vivid life with her skill in colouring her tone and making insightful use of the text.

She is credited with changing the history of opera: by placing a perhaps unprecedented emphasis on musical integrity and dramatic truth, and by transforming perceptions – and reviving the fortunes – of the bel canto repertoire, particularly Bellini and Donizetti.

The 1950s marked the height of Callas’s career. Its base lay in the opera houses of Italy, and she became the prima donna assoluta of Milan’s legendary La Scala – notably in the productions of Luchino Visconti – but her operatic appearances also encompassed London’s Royal Opera House, the New York Metropolitan Opera, Paris Opéra, the Vienna State Opera, and the opera houses of Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Lisbon, and, in the early 1950s, Mexico City, São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro.

From 1959, when she started a life-changing love affair with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, her performing career slowed down and her voice became more fragile. Her final stage performances came in 1965, when she was only 42.

There were many plans for a return to the stage – and for further complete recordings – but they never reached fruition, though in 1974 she gave a series of concerts in Europe, North America and Japan with the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano; he had partnered her frequently in the opera house and in the studio, not least in the 1953 La Scala Tosca under Victor de Sabata, considered a landmark in recording history. Callas died alone in her Paris apartment in September 1977.

Booklet for Verdi: Il trovatore (1956 - Karajan) - Callas Remastered