Radio: Callas’s Carmen

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30712, 30 March 1965, Page 11

Radio: Callas’s Carmen

Maria Callas, the bestknown opera singer since Caruso, will be heard in the long-awaited recording of her “Carmen” from 3YC on Sunday evening.

“Carmen” is the opera which critics have predicted would be one of her greatest and a likely gramophone classic ever since her recording of two “Carmen” arias in 1961.

Callas has the greatest repertory of any present-day singer, but it has only been in the last few years that she has turned to French opera. She has recorded several French arias, and “Carmen” is her first complete French opera. Difficulties in controlling her vibrato—the famous “wobble” which has become worse—on her highest notes make her voice more suited to a mezzo role like Carmen than to her more famous soprano roles such as Tosca or Lucia.

The recording was made last July in Paris. In the tenor role of Jose, the soldier led astray by the gypsy and the protagonist of the opera, is Nicolai Gedda. Andrea Guiot sings Micaela, Jose’s sweetheart, and Robert Massard the part of Escamillo, the toreador. The conductor is Georges Petre, a young Frenchman who is said to give Callas the vocal direction that Serafin gave her in her youth in Italy.

Callas had read Merimee’s novel on which Bizet had based “Carmen,” but she said she did not regard her as a bad woman. “What she likes, she does. It’s an almost masculine attitude. No, she’s not bad.”

Her preference was for a catlike Carmen. “We have grown accustomed to a mezzo conception of Carmen, but it need not be heavy and forced. Carmen should be light, legere, and lively, swift. A

mezzo cannot achieve this effect. It’s like the difference between a greyhound and a bulldog. One is swift . . .

Carmen should be ironic, light.” Callas said she did not plan her roles. “One just sings one does not plan things or explain them. You hear the basso do so and so, and you know then what you have to do. That’s how it happens. And through your music you are either understood or not,” she said. The recording did not win the rave reviews expected. Andrew Porter, writing in the “Financial Times,” said: “Callas’s keenest, discriminating admirers will probably rate this set with her ‘Ballo in Maschera’: fascinating, as is everything she does, but predictable, and without the revelatory power of her great performances. “If she ever sings it in the theatre, I have no doubt that the performance will be spellbinding.” Auckland “Fidelio” An Auckland production of Beethoven’s solitary opera, “Fidelio,” will be broadcast on Saturday evening. Ramon Opie will be heard as the imprisoned Liberal, Florestan, Elizabeth Hellawell as his wife, Leonore, Grant Dickson as the chief gaoler, Rocco, and Beryl Dailey as the gaoler’s daughter Marzellino. The Auckland Choral Society and Symphonia are conducted by Ray Wilson. Hero At Home

The centenary of Richard Strauss has brought a new recording of a neglected tone poem, the “Symphonia Domestica,” which recapitulates many of the salient characteristics of the earlier tone poems. The score is lavish

and detailed, glowing in rich colours and polyphony, and containing ingenious interrelationships. Because of its intimate domesticity it has been called “the hero at home.” At first Strauss said he wanted it to be taken as pure music, but later he permitted the publication of descriptive outlines. The architechtural sketch, as published in the Berlin Philharmonic programme of December 12, 1904, is as follows: 1. Introduction and development of the three chief groups of themes. The husband’s themes—easy going; dreamy; fiery. The wife’s themes—lively and gay; grazioso. The child’s themes—tranquil. 2. Scherzo. Parent’s happiness. Childish play. Cradle song (the clock strikes seven in the evening). 3. Adagio. Doing and thinking, Love scene. Dreams and cares (the clock strikes seven in the morning). 4. Finale. Awakening and merry dispute (double fugue). Joyous conclusion. The recording of this played by the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell will be heard from 3YC on Wednesday evening. Lute, Harpsichord

When Bach heard two great lutenis'ts playing together the sound inspired him to have a harpsichord made that would imitate the sound of a lute. Some of the music that Bach heard will be included in a 3YC programme on Friday, played by George Malcolm and Julian Bream. The works are by Reusner, one of the most celebrated seventeenthcentury German lutenists, Kuhnau, who was Bach's predecessor at St Thomas’s Church, Leipzig, and Froberger, court organist in Vienna.