A colleague and reader of this blog posted Amina’s “Ah non giunge” to Facebook last night, writing that after “months of stomach-churning terror” it seemed apt. He chose the 1957 Cologne performance, which I prefer; this is from La Scala in 1955 and features the crazy ornamentations wrought by Leonard Bernstein.

Can you imagine singing this at the end of a long “trapeze-rôle” opera, to borrow a phrase from Callas?

I am still cranky (behind on my work, too) after Sandy. I know some people still without power, and many New Yorkers and people in surrounding states lost everything.

Some of my friends here in Manhattan waited on line for three hours in order to vote. I’m not sure why the waits were so long this time around. One reason may be that we used paper ballots, supposedly the voting method least vulnerable to tampering. That said, anyone who doesn’t have an understanding employer or cannot spend hours away from an ailing family member is effectively disenfranchised.

I am exhausted and hung over with disbelief and joy following the election. At roughly 2:00 a.m. today I was in tears as I listened to President Obama speak these words:

This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities, our culture are the envy of all the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedoms which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.

Marriage equality was ratified in four more states. I lost friends to the AIDS genocide; I never thought that I would live to see the dignity and rights of LGBT Americans affirmed so resoundingly, just as I never thought that I would live to see an African-American President elected. As Andrew Sullivan wrote, November 6, 2012 was the single biggest night for gay rights in U.S. electoral history.

Women account for 20% of the incoming U.S. Senate. That’s still too little, but we’re moving in the right direction. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin will be our first openly gay Senator. Her sexual orientation was largely a non-issue in the campaign.

Tulsi Gabbard will be our first Hindu American Representative; she will also be the first female combat veteran to serve in Congress. When Vice President Biden administers the oath of office, she will place her hand on the Bhagavad Gita. (Representative Ellison took the oath of office using Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an; I wonder if her text will have a similarly illustrious history.) Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono will become the first Buddhist and the first Asian-American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.

New Hampshire has the nation’s first all-female Congressional delegation.

Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden: they tell us that President Obama and Vice President Biden love and respect strong, intelligent, accomplished women.

The evening’s only major blow: California failed to abolish the death penalty.

My favorite founding documents are the 1790 letters exchanged between Moses Seixas, warden of the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, and President George Washington, who wrote:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

We’re not there yet, but last night brought us closer.

Yes we can.

I believe (please correct me if I’m wrong) that this performance of “Casta diva” from Bellini’s Norma was given on 31 December 1957, just before the infamous “Rome walkout.”

The audio and video quality are poor, and Callas seems to be in middling, rather wobbly voice (though that may be a result of the dodgy sound). Days later, to borrow a word from a newspaper report of the time, she “outraged” all Italy by withdrawing from a gala performance of Norma in the presence of the Italian president, Giovanni Gronchi. The brouhaha effectively marked the end of her career in Italy and, indeed, of her most important artistic achievements.

Callas on the beach.

Happy birthday to Maria Callas, who was born on 2 December 1923.

To celebrate, I offer her and you the online equivalent of a dozen red roses: a dozen favorite blog posts about Callas!

• Martha Graham on Callas
• Callas sings Boito
• Callas de cire, Callas de son
• Callas and Isolde
• Video of Callas as Cherubini’s Medea
• Callas in Bellini’s Il pirata
• Rufus Wainwright and Callas
• Callas in Mozart and Verdi
• Dacia Maraini and Callas
• Armen Ra and Callas
• Callas sings Berlioz
• Callas in the Norma finale

If you are looking for words, try my essay, my 2007 tribute to Callas, or the chock-full-of-Rossini birthday post.

La Callas à Paris.

Dr. Alessandro Duranti of Florence (not the anthropologist) is, to quote Dante, “lo mio maestro e ’l mio autore.” His teaching and writing fostered the two great intellectual loves of my life, opera and cinquecento epic poetry.

He wrote a beautiful article about Maria Callas back in 2007 for the Italian journal  Paragone. I offer you an excerpt here, to go along with Maria Callas’s performance of “Casta diva” and “Bello a me ritorna” from Bellini’s Norma at her Paris début concert in 1958.

(The best iterations of this performance that I found on YouTube all had embedding disabled. Sorry for the need to click through.)

How does she sing? Extremely well, in my view, especially when she manages to free herself from the dead wood of a chorus that seems a band of killers sent to Paris by Ghiringhelli and Bing working together to spoil their great enemy’s party. But if you insist on making an issue of notes that are more or less steady, then I dare you to find me in the present, past, or prehistory a celebrated singer, one of those who can rest on their laurels and earn their keep with popular songs and arena appearances, capable of putting herself on the line with a similar program under the most blinding spotlights. You won’t find one, because Callas was unique for many reasons, including her impudent courage. Even when her strength began to decline, Callas never took refuge in easy programs. She always spared us the sadness of hearing her sing “Mamma” or “Bela madunina” at La Scala, and this alone would suffice to launch a process of beatification.

Hear Maria Callas in other music by Bellini.

“Dolce e calmo”: Maria Callas sings Wagner

Following the lead of dear @JanettMR, today I point you to a wonderful website, the Maria Callas Museum.

The site is chock-full of fascinating materials in many media, including recordings. One screen is devoted to Maria Callas’s 1949 Cetra recordings—or rather, to some of them, because I believe that there is an alternate take of “Qui la voce” from Bellini’s I Puritani (and perhaps also a test recording of “Casta diva”).

All of these recordings are among Maria Callas’s very best: Isolde’s Tranfiguration, Part I and Part II, from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; “Casta diva” Part I and Part II plus “Bello a me ritorna” from Bellini’s Norma; and “Qui la voce” and “Vien diletto” from I Puritani.

When Maria Callas made these recordings in November 1949, she was not yet 26 years old.

In her 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp,’” Susan Sontag listed Bellini’s operas as an example of camp. One definition of the phenomenon that Sontag offered was: “Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is ‘too much.’”

Wasn’t one of Callas’s greatest and most striking achievements that she took seriously music that had been considered not altogether serious? That she showed us that depths are there for those with ears to hear and eyes to see?

Today’s offering, in two parts: Callas in 1959 singing the final scene from Bellini’s Il pirata. Callas sang the opera five times at La Scala in May 1958; they were her last performances at the house until the 1961 Poliuto. She also recorded this scene for EMI in 1958 and sang it frequently during her 1959 concert tour.

These clips, I think, are some of the most important footage of Callas that we have, showing how much she could communicate without even singing.

Callas also sang Pirata in concert in both New York and Washington, DC in early 1959. Some say that she was thumbing her nose at Rudolf Bing and showing him and opera lovers what they were missing after her “firing” from the Metropolitan Opera and Bing’s refusal to stage early ottocento operas, which he deemed “old bores.”

Hear Maria Callas in other music by Bellini from the archives.

Sketchy blog traffic.

Look, we blog curators welcome most any traffic, but this? Of late, similar Google search strings from all over the world (and not only from necrophilic Canucks) have shown up in my log. Thanks a lot, Terrence McNally.

More sketchiness: The complete track list from Angela Gheorghiu’s so-called Homage to Maria Callas is now available. Let’s see how the musical selections relate to Maria Callas, shall we?

• Arias from Medea and Il pirata: Fine. Both, pace my colleague Robert Seletsky, were important Callas revivals.
• Arias from La traviata: An important Callas rôle. But, honestly, just how many times does Mme Gheorghiu need to record this music?
• Arias from I pagliacci, La Wally, Adriana Lecouvreur, and Samson et Dalila: Callas recorded them but never sang them in public. What’s more, she never approved the release of the Samson aria, which was issued posthumously.
• Arias from Faust and La bohème: Callas sang the Faust aria during her Greek years and recorded it, but never otherwise sang it in public. She recorded the Bohème aria twice (Puccini recital and complete Bohème) but never sang it in public.
• Aria from Andrea Chénier: She sang it once during her Greek years, once for EMI, six times in Chénier at La Scala (not by any account her shining hour).
• Aria from Le Cid: She recorded it for EMI and sang it a handful of times (four or five) in concert.
• “Duet” from Carmen: Oh, do not get me started. But hardly a Callas speciality.

Someone enlighten me, please: Where is the “homage” to Maria Callas in all this? And again I ask: What need does Angela Gheorghiu, an artist of substance, have to stoop to this flimsy and cynical exploitation of the memory of Maria Callas?

It would have been relatively easy to put together a plausible homage to Callas: arias, say, from Armida and perhaps Haydn’s Orfeo ed Euridice (and maybe even the Stradella San Giovanni Battista); some Wagner (why not “La morte di Isotta” or “Ho visto il figlio” from Parsifal?); Vestale, Bolena, Ifigenia, Sonnambula (all or some) to represent the Visconti stagings besides Traviata; different Verdi (Macbeth? Vespri? Ballo?); and some of the bravura material (the Proch variations, Dinorah, Lakmé, or some such). In truth, the bravura material is probably beyond Gheorghiu at this point, but I think that she could handle the rest beautifully.

Weasels! Sigh.

Tullio Serafin was born in Rottanova (near Venice) on this day in 1878. When Serafin came into the world, Verdi had yet to revise Simon Boccanegra or to compose Otello and Falstaff.

Callas recalled her meeting with Serafin as the “really lucky” break in her career. He led her 1947 Italian début in La Gioconda and the subsequent Tristano e Isotta that opened so many doors for her. He also engaged her for that famous, last-minute Puritani in 1949—arguably the single most important gig of Callas’s career and perhaps even the moment when the so-called “bel-canto revival” began.

Callas said of her mentor:

He opened a world to me, showed me there was a reason for everything, that even fiorature and trills… have a reason in the composer’s mind, that they are the expression of the stato d’animo [state of mind] of the character—that is, the way he feels at the moment, the passing emotions that take hold of him. He would coach us for every little detail, every movement, every word, every breath… He taught me the proportions of recitative—how it is elastic, the proportions altering so slightly that only you can understand it… He was breathing with you, living the music with you, loving it with you. It was elastic, growing, living.

Nowadays, many musicians and scholars—rightly, I think—excoriate Serafin for the modernist liberties he took with early ottocento music. (They also excoriate Callas for blindly following him and for perpetuating his misdeeds in her remarks and teaching.) I myself think of Serafin as a wonderful advocate for this music as he understood it. Nowadays, thanks to Philip Gossett, Will Crutchfield, and others, we know so much more about this music than people did in the mid-twentieth century, but let us not forget that without the interest in early ottocento repertoire sparked by the work of Serafin and Callas, we might not have a Gossett, a Crutchfield, or any of the others who so brilliantly advocate for this music today.

The finale of Bellini’s Norma is one of the pinnacles of music of any era. Tullio Serafin leads this 1953 1954 EMI recording starring Maria Callas, Mario Fillippeschi, and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni.

A “Sonnambula” curtain call in the 1950s.

Today’s recording is from 1965: “Ah, se una volta… Ah, non credea mirarti” from Bellini’s La sonnambula, with Georges Prêtre leading the Orchestre National de l’ORTF.

Callas taught this music during her Juilliard master classes, but this was apparently the last time that she ever sang it in public. While her tone here is sometimes fragile to the point of being evanescent, the performance is inward and utterly mesmerizing, showing that Callas could give of her best even at the end of her stage career.

That said, at the end of her stage career, when this was recorded, she was not yet 42: Ah, non credea, indeed.

Hear Maria Callas in other music by Bellini.