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Verdi - I Vespri Siciliani

£21.79

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Label: Testament

Cat No: SBT21416

Barcode: 0749677141622

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 2

Genre: Opera

Release Date: 1st September 2007

Works

Verdi, Giuseppe

I vespri siciliani

Artists

Maria Callas
Giorgio Kokolios-Bardi
Enzo Mascherini
Boris Christoff
Bruno Carmassi
Mario Frosini
Mafalda Masini
Gino Sarri
Aldo de Paoli
Lido Pettini
Brenno Ristori
Coro e Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Firenze

Conductor

Erich Kleiber

Works

Verdi, Giuseppe

I vespri siciliani

Artists

Conductor

Erich Kleiber

About

Kleiber and Callas in I vespri siciliani

Between Callas’s début in Italy in La Gioconda in Verona in August 1947 and her triumphant conquest of La Scala in I vespri siciliani in December 1951, there were two milestone performances that totally changed the course of her career. The first was in I puritani in Venice in January 1949 and the other was in I vespri siciliani in Florence in May 1951.

In May 1951, Callas had two extremely important engagements at the Teatro Comunale in Florence as part of the Maggio Musicale Festival. The Teatro Comunale was under the enlightened direction of Francesco Siciliani, who had immediately recognised Callas’s exceptional artistic gifts when he first encountered her towards the end of 1948 and offered her two performances of Norma at short notice. Callas was considering returning to the USA around that time and it was Siciliani’s perspicacity in asking her to sing her first bel canto role that persuaded her to stay in Italy. In the next few years Siciliani remained a major influence on Callas’s artistic development and in Florence she gave her first performances of La traviata (the opera she sang most after Norma), I vespri siciliani, Orfeo ed Eurydice (Haydn), Armida, Medea and her first Lucia di Lammermoor in Italy. At the May 1951 Festival, the two operas she sang were I vespri siciliani and the world première of Haydn’s Orfeo ed Eurydice, both under the great Austrian conductor Erich Kleiber, who was making his first visit to Italy to conduct opera.

After their collaboration in Florence in May 1951, Callas and Kleiber never performed together again. Kleiber was engaged to conduct Parsifal at La Scala with Callas as Kundry in May 1956, but when he died unexpectedly in January 1956, the Parsifalwas somewhat surprisingly replaced by Fedora under the baton of Gianandrea Gavazzeni.

The high quality tapes used as source material for this Testament release came from a private recording made for the EMI producer Walter Legge, who was interested primarily in the performances of the singers, so the overture, which is missing from the recording, was of no special importance to him. Lord Harewood acquired the tapes from Legge’s collection for use in a presentation that he devised to celebrate Callas’s life and achievements, and they have now been donated to Music Preserved. It was decided not to include the overture from the usual inferior sound source because this would have meant that the complete recording could not be accommodated on two CDs.

Extracted from the booklet note © Tony Locantro, 2007