Maria Callas in “Norma”, beloved role, fatal role

2023-08-07 17:59:55

December 19, 1958. Prestigious evening in favor of the works of the Legion of Honor at the Palais Garnier. The political All-Paris, starting with President Coty, artistic and socialite, or the Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis, is there. The Paris Opera is awash in flowers and lights, television cameras immortalize the event. For her first concert in Paris, Maria Callas appears supremely elegant, draped in a stole which she plays like a theatrical prop. The voice rises, the incantations of Caste Divathe famous prayer of the Normathe opera by Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), hover under the gilded ceiling – which is not yet that of Chagall.

This triumph of the singer takes on the appearance of revenge. Indeed, his Norma, “the most exposed role of the entire repertoire” according to the great dramatic soprano Lilli Lehmann – she confided that she preferred five Wagners to one Bellini (1) –, had caused controversy in Rome, at the very beginning of this same year 1958. Exhausted, voiceless, Maria Callas left the stage after the first act not to come back. An abandonment widely reported in the press, especially since, again, the President of the Republic attended the performance.

Fetish role

Incarnation, as often in opera, of the forbidden passion, Norma features a Gallic priestess in love with a Roman proconsul with whom she had two children. From now on, this clandestine companion neglects her in favor of another. Jealous, Norma precipitates her own downfall and that of her unfaithful lover. Callas approaches this character in 1948 in Florence and, for many years, she will make her favorite role, interpreting her nearly 100 times.

Maria Callas and Luchino Visconti, in Rome, in 1958, the day bronchitis prevented the soprano from completing her first role in the opera “Norma”. /AP

«With each note, you seem to hear the night breeze sighing in the dewy leaves. It is something fresh, velvety, silvery, bluish,” dreamed in The Beauties of Opera (1845) the writer Théophile Gautier listening Caste Diva. No doubt amazed by the languid volutes, the descending scales, the spun sounds, rivaling in poetry with those of the flute, companion of the voice. Callas also asserted that «the prima donna was nothing but the first instrument of the orchestra ».

Tullius Serafin as mentor

The haughty allure of the soprano, her queenly bearing, her gloomy gaze… Everything conspired to magnify the wounded nobility of the character, while, as the work progressed, the fever set ablaze the ethereal singing line of the swan of Catania, as Bellini was called. However, this is not quite how the public of Covent Garden in London discovered the diva in 1952, Maria Callas having not yet lost the weight weighing down her silhouette. She will undertake a drastic diet, reprimanded by her mentor, the conductor Tullio Serafin (with whom she will record Norma twice): in the city as on the stage, the artist then became a model of haute couture style and elegance.

But this role that she loves and fears at the same time will bring her many more setbacks, so much you have to be at her zenith to honor the nuances from top to bottom of the range, the long phrasings, the complaints like the imprecations. In 1965, when she was engaged for a series of five performances in Paris, Callas knew she was tired but refused to cancel. May 29 will be one night too many. On the verge of fainting, she completes the first scene of Act II before the curtain falls on the unfinished spectacle. Apart from a royal gala on July 5 in London, the soprano will no longer appear on an opera set.

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Listen to Callas in “Norma”

Three integral records immortalize the identification of the singer with the Gallic priestess.

• 1952under the direction of Vittorio Gui with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden, the mezzo-soprano Ebe Stignani and the tenor Mirto Picchi.

• 1954under the direction of Tullio Serafin with the Orchestra and Choir of La Scala, the mezzo-soprano Ebe Stignani and the tenor Mario Filippeschi.

• 1960under the direction of Tullio Serafin with the Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala, the mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig and the tenor Franco Corelli.

• In the INA archives (and on various sites), we find the gala at the Palais Garnier on December 19, 1958, which saw the Parisian debut of Maria Callas.