Lucia’s Mad Scene
I came across this little clip of the great Maria Callas on youtube, and couldn’t resist sharing it for the benefit of those (apparently many) people out there who think she was an overrated singer. I’m a devout Callas fan, but I also freely admit that many of the performances she recorded later in her career (especially in the 60s) weren’t all that good and it’s unfortunate that most of her famous performances were in an era when audio technology wasn’t really up to the task of recording live opera.
However, you can get an idea of how very special Maria Callas was in this little clip recorded live at La Scala in Milan in 1954. It’s a poor quality recording but her voice has a stunning radiance to it despite the distortions. This is the very end of the lengthy Act III “Mad Scene” from Donizetti‘s Opera Lucia di Lammermoor. It’s a tremendously demanding piece, which Callas sings with flawless technical accuracy and extraordinary expressive power leading up to a ringing top E♭ at the end. Her approach to the vocal gymnastics required by the bel canto repertoire was uniquely full-on and, without a safety net, the sense of danger surrounding these performances made them truly electrifying.
Only some of the music made it onto the recording, but there’s enough there to convince the doubters that this was a very special artist. And, listening to the applause at the end, the notoriously demanding audience at La Scala were clearly convinced too!
Incidentally, some argue that Callas’ voice was in decline after her substantial weight loss (she lost 80lbs between 1953 and 1954), but this was the slim Callas and her voice sounds pretty good to me!
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In the Dark 
July 4, 2011 at 1:56 pm
She’s a great artist – but it has to be said that the final Eflat is painfully sharp.
July 4, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Yes, she does miss the last note. Not as badly as some I’ve heard, but it’s noticeable even through the radio distortions and to someone who has extremely imperfect pitch like me. It’s a shame, actually because the rest of it is sung so beautifully. Like stumbling at the last fence. Didn’t seem to bother the audience though!
Curiously, Donizetti’s original key for this piece is F-major, in which it would end with an F natural. I guess it’s usually transposed down to make it easier for the singers.
August 20, 2012 at 7:54 pm
Donizitti never wrote an F natural or an E flat as the final note. That was an affectation that was adopted by earlier canary-esque Bel Canto singers. In fact Donizetti never wrote the popular soprano and flute duet cadenza, that was composed in 1888 and included for Nellie Melba long after the opera was written. Callas mostly liked to sing Lucia come scritto as she said it made greater dramatic sense. The Hamburg performance was a better recording as Deutch-gramaphon were technically better that RCA at La Scala and Callas eschewed the “suicide note”.
July 5, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Philip: I don’t have perfect pitch. But from what I know of it, it is indeed an absolute calibration, and a single note heard in isolation can be named. You’re right that pitch standards have varied with time, and I’m told that this is a real problem for people with perfect pitch, since they learn that A means 440 Hz, and then find it impossible to cope with Baroque playing at A=435 (20% of a semitone flat), even if the relative pitching is flawless – they just can’t reset their pitch standard, and hear every note as wrong. So it’s a bit of a curse, really.
July 5, 2011 at 7:08 pm
Doesn’t it just mean that we must have an inbuilt reference calibration – presumably related to some natural frequencies of our earholes – that provides a preferred tuning. It’s clear better defined in some people than others, but we all must have it at some level.
Perfect pitch is undoubtedly a handicap when it comes to jazz and blues, in which singers habitually sing “under the note” (i.e. flat), bands pay relatively little attention to tuning up, and club pianos are usually out of tune anyway. It is however, a great advantage to have a good ear in the sense of being able to follow what others are doing without reference to sheet music.