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Maria Callas - At Covent Garden 1962 and 1964
: :The second half of this recording is an important item in the too-scanty video discography of Maria Callas. Matched with another great singing actor, Tito Gobbi as the lecherous, hypocritical Scarpia, she participates in a textbook demonstration of how Act II of Tosca should be performed. There is a subtlety and nuance in their interactions that one seeks in vain in later, technologically more advanced videos. With a murder onstage, torture offstage, sexual harassment, and deep anguish (beautifully expressed in 'Vissi d'arte'), this act provides rich opportunities for these performers, and they take ...
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The Art of Singing: Golden Voices of the Century
: :The second half of this recording is an important item in the too-scanty video discography of Maria Callas. Matched with another great singing actor, Tito Gobbi as the lecherous, hypocritical Scarpia, she participates in a textbook demonstration of how Act II of Tosca should be performed. There is a subtlety and nuance in their interactions that one seeks in vain in later, technologically more advanced videos. With a murder onstage, torture offstage, sexual harassment, and deep anguish (beautifully expressed in 'Vissi d'arte'), this act provides rich opportunities for these performers, and they take ...
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Maria Callas - The Callas Conversations (EMI Classic Archive)
: :The Callas Conversations offers some rare and fascinating glimpses of Maria Callas, whose life and art are well-documented by books and records but less so in video formats. What is documented here is mostly Callas as an interview subject, not Callas as an operatic actress who transfixed audiences with her visual presence. The two 1968 BBC interviews are her most important appearances on television. Her conversations with George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, a dominant figure in English opera, and a friendly, knowledgeable interviewer, put her completely at ease. They discuss her early ...
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Maria Callas - La Callas... Toujours
:Description:Maria Callas is the quintessential diva who changed the face of the opera in the 20th century. The repertoire in this performance shows Callas at her best, both in recital and as an operatic actress. Verdi, Rossini, and Bellini were three composers at the heart of Maria Callas's career. Her personal life was of tragic operatic dimensions and perhaps no role comes closer to the essence of Callas than Floria Tosca. The second half to the program comprises the complete Act 2 of this opera, with a brilliant performance by Tito Gobbi in ...
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Great Recordings of the Century - The DVD
:Description:Maria Callas is the quintessential diva who changed the face of the opera in the 20th century. The repertoire in this performance shows Callas at her best, both in recital and as an operatic actress. Verdi, Rossini, and Bellini were three composers at the heart of Maria Callas's career. Her personal life was of tragic operatic dimensions and perhaps no role comes closer to the essence of Callas than Floria Tosca. The second half to the program comprises the complete Act 2 of this opera, with a brilliant performance by Tito Gobbi in ...
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Callas - A Documentary Plus Bonus / John Ardoin, Franco Zeffirelli
:Description:Extensive performance footage including some real rarities. Newsreel footage: her funeral cortege; the Rome Walkout ('I would spit in the faces of my enemies...and make them go on their knees in front of me! I can! I will! And I must!'); her break with Ghiringhelli, Callas reading Bing's telegram firing her ('I cannot do routine'); Meneghini, Onassis and Churchill; Callas hounded by the press on her private life; Callas dancing with Onassis; her return to New York (1965); press conference about the Medea film (plus clips from the film); Callas as co-stage director ...
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Maria Callas: The Eternal Maria Callas
:Description:Extensive performance footage including some real rarities. Newsreel footage: her funeral cortege; the Rome Walkout ('I would spit in the faces of my enemies...and make them go on their knees in front of me! I can! I will! And I must!'); her break with Ghiringhelli, Callas reading Bing's telegram firing her ('I cannot do routine'); Meneghini, Onassis and Churchill; Callas hounded by the press on her private life; Callas dancing with Onassis; her return to New York (1965); press conference about the Medea film (plus clips from the film); Callas as co-stage director ...
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Medea
: :The only movie made by Maria Callas, Medea nevertheless contains not a note of the great diva singing. And yet her presence is stunning, with a face (often seen in close-up) that cuts across the frame like a great phenomenon of nature. This raw, mostly wordless take on the Greek classic is a characteristic film from the influential Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini: intellectually sophisticated yet almost primitive in its feel. The weird, jagged locations and Pasolini's elliptical style contribute to the sense of violence already in the story, and the visual approach ...
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Maria Callas in Concert - Hamburg 1959 and 1962
: :If Maria Callas had been born 30 years later, there's no doubt that she would be a multimedia star. Her vocal technique continues to divide critics decades after her death, and even at the peak of her powers it was rarely a voice that pandered to ideas of conventional beauty. But visually, she was mesmerizing. Callas was the first modern opera singer to act a role rather than just sing it and she exploited this ability to the full. Proof is to be found in the precious few filmed performances that survive from ...
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Maria Callas - La Divina: A Portrait
:Description:No other opera singer this century has aroused such public interest, such adulation and such controversy as Maria Callas, 'La Divina Assoluta.' Her dramatic and musical reincarnations of operatic heroines were invested with a psychological depth which made her performances and recordings definitive, and her recordings still outsell every other major classical singer. Callas transformed herself from an overweight ugly duckling into a dazzling beauty, inspired by the sylph-like Audrey Hepburn. She was labeled a 'tigress' for her temperamental image, others thought her behavior so unforgivable she was pelted with eggs, but her ...
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