Maria Callas: 90 Operas Arias (2023 Remastered, Recorded from 1953-1964)

This important anthology brings together 90 major operatic arias performed by the great Maria Callas over a period (the most significant of her career) spanning from 1953 to 1964.

What made her unique was her ability to grasp the very essence of each character she portrayed thanks to her fidelity to the text and the music, to the nuances of her timbre, her phrasing, her instinct, and the considerable three-octave range of her tessitura.

When one listens to the vocal and dramatic nuances Callas manages to create between different characters, one is dazzled. And then there is that voice — pure, tender, childlike, murderous, charming, imperious, innocent, seductive, filled with love or with hatred… It was a voice that could be anything except, according to some, “conventionally beautiful.”

In the first half of the nineteenth century, before vocal registers were clearly defined, female voices were classified into two categories: soprano or contralto, high or low, bright or dark. Maria Callas was what one calls a “soprano sfogato” (or “soprano assoluta”), which means that she could sing everything that was written for the female voice.

The so-called “sfogato,” or “unlimited” voice, is rooted in the mezzo-soprano register but, thanks to study or to nature (in Callas’s case, both), it can extend upward to include notes beyond high B-natural — sometimes up to E.

It is no exaggeration to say that the shadow of Maria Callas still hangs over us today: the sopranos who sing her great roles are still compared to her. “Casta Diva,” sung by the Diva, is by itself a tuning fork set for all future generations.

We conclude with this quotation: “An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It begins in my imagination, it becomes my life and it remains a part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.” — Maria Callas

Enjoy your listening