Maria Callas Meets the Incredible Hulk

Opera in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Opera lover: Mark Ruffalo is the Hulk in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
"Hulk", "Incredible Hulk" and "Avengers" are registered trademarks of Marvel Studios.
Image © 2015 Marvel Studios used for promotional purposes only.

One of the ongoing difficulties faced when writing about opera is the age-old and tired saw that opera has become irrelevant. That the work of Wagner, Verdi and Bellini has nothing to offer the 21st century and that it is a dying or worse yet, fossilized art form.

Brass Tacks: Bel Canto

Our series on Opera Styles visits Italy in the early 19th century.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Anna Netrebko's appearance in I puritani at the Met touched off a surge of interest in bel canto style.

Photo by Ken Howard © 2006 The Metropolitan Opera.

Bel canto (the term simply means "beautiful song") refers to an Italian opera style that placed a heavy emphasis on the voice over the music, allowing sopranos and tenors plenty of room for florid display and vocal fireworks. Bel canto operas are usually tragedies--the term for Italian comic opera is opera buffa.

(The opposite of "bel canto" is when singers yell over an orchestra, an approach known to opera wonks as "can belto.")

The bel canto style evolved from the baroque opera seria, and dominated the stages of Italy's opera houses until about 1840. In those years, Italian opera was ruled by three men: Giaochino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini. Rossini and Donizetti wrote both comedies and tragic operas. Bellini wrote only tragedies. It should be noted that there were other important composers in the bel canto style (Cherubini, Spontini, Mercadente, but these are the three whose music remains popular today.)

Arguably the most famous bel canto aria: "Il dolce sono." This is the "Mad Scene" from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.

Performance by Natalie Dessay © 2010 The Metropolitan Opera.

Brass Tacks: Sopranos

Part I of a Superconductor series on Voice Types.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

La Divina: The great Maria Callas. Photo © EMI Classics.

If I were teaching a basic class on the appreciation of opera, I might start with the different types of voices and singers. So we're starting a series on voice types, complete with entertaining musical examples. If you already know this information, you're still likely to enjoy the music!

Let's take it from top--literally.

Sopranos are (usually) female singers whose range runs two octaves (and possibly more). (Male sopranos are sometimes heard in choral music, but are commonly replaced by countertenors or even boy trebles.) Composers from another era wrote for the castrati (boy singers who were mutilated before puberty to preserve their voices) but we're not even going to go there right now.

The soprano range from Middle C to High F.

The (usual) low note for a soprano is "middle" C (the center of the piano keyboard) although some operas can call for a middle A♭. The high note is another C, two octaves above middle C. Some composers ask for higher notes--all the way up to the series of high Fs that Mozart wrote into "Die hölle rache", a famous aria from Die Zauberflöte.

Finding Maria Callas...in Brooklyn

An operatic treasure in Park Slope.

Sweet, innocent, and a viper: Maria Callas as Rosina.
Photo © 1958 EMI Classics

Last Saturday afternoon, following brunch, I found myself at Brooklyn Record and Tape, an old, somewhat beaten-up, but interesting record store in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Tony's shop is a living throwback, a record store crammed with vinyl, CDs, cassettes and VHS. He may even have 8-tracks--I've never asked.

And there, on top of a wooden CD crate of hip-hop CDs, it sat. The 1997 EMI reissue (on two CDs) of the 1958 La Scala recording of Il Barbiere di Siviglia. I looked at the prices for the small classical CD collection. $4 a disc. $8 for two. I bought it immediately.

Taking my new purchase home on the B63 bus, I wanted to yell and shout, to exult that I had scored Maria Callas in Park Slope. But nobody would have understood what that meant, and it was better to just take my new-found treasure home quietly.

Needless to say, I've been listening to the Callas Barbiere steadily for the last two days. It is a brisk, professional affair, graced with the presence of La Divina as the ingenious Rosina. Ms. Callas accents the viperish nature and worldly wisdom of Dr. Bartolo's young ward. Her "Una voce poco fa" is lovely, complete with a hair-raising high note in the final bars.

"Dunque Io Sono", Rosina's duet with Figaro, is the highlight of this first act, matching Maria with her longtime onstage sparring partner Tito Gobbi. Mr. Gobbi is a great comic barber, brash and arrogant during "Largo al factotum." He and Luigi Alva soar together in "All' idea di quell metallo" and "Numero quindice. It feels like the conductor Alcero Galliera, is hurrying to keep up with his singers.


This recording features Luigi Alva, early in the role that became the trademark of his career. The bel canto tenor is in good comic form, displaying the comic chops needed for Almaviva's disguised entries into Dr. Bartolo's household. "Pace gioia" elicits real laughter, as Alva puts on an irritating, nasal voice and an air of piety. Fritz Ollendorf is a harsh-toned Bartolo, but surmounts the tongue-tripping challenges of "Un dottor della mia sorta", an aria so difficult that it was left out of the opera for almost a century.

Although this is a studio recording, the nature of Barbiere allows the listener to hear Callas working in ensembles, particularly the big sextet and chorus that rings down the curtain on Act I. She uses the lower range of her instrument to create a mezzo Rosina, as the composer originally intended. And yes, there is a special thrill when her distinctive voice cuts through the texture of the other singers. How often to you get to hear a goddess do comedy?

Angela Gheorghiu vs. Maria Callas

Technology pits Romanian soprano against La Divina.

"Devo veramente a cantare con lei?"
Maria Callas in Cherubini's Medea.
Photo © EMI Classics/La Scala archive.

Like the late diva Emilia Marty, soprano Angela Gheorghiu has made a bid for immortality with her forthcoming CD release: Homage to Maria Callas.

The disc features the Romanian soprano singing some of Callas' favorite repertory in the verismo genre, including arias from Puccini's La bohème, Catalani's La Wally and "La Mamma Morta", the aria from Giordano's Andrea Chenier made famous in the movie Philadelphia.

But the most controversial addition to the disc is a digitally built duet between La Gheorghiu and the late Maria Callas. The two sopranos, one living, one very dead, will sing "L'amour c'est l'oiseaux rebelle", the Habañera from Act I of Bizet's Carmen.

According to a press release (received today from EMI Classics) the new "duet" was created from the original master tape of Callas' 1961 recording of the aria. The engineers chose this over the '63 recording of the complete opera, because it lacked the usual choral accompaniment.

In the engineering booth, the original orchestra (the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française under the baton of George Prêtre) was scrubbed out. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Marco Armiliato re-recorded the music, with the players using a special click track to match the original. Ms. Gheorghiu also chose to learn Callas' particular sense of rhythm and meter, enabling the two divas to warble together, or seperately.


Leaving aside obvious reservations (the biggest one being that the Habañera is intended for one singer!) the new disc will hit New York's few remaining record shops in October, shortly before Ms. Gheorghiu's scheduled appearance with the Opera Orchestra of New York. In the OONY performance, she will sing the title role in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvrer.

Ms. Gheorghiu has a history of recent cancellations and controversies at the Metropolitan Opera. In an interview this weekend with the Los Angeles Times, conductor Leonard Slatkin blamed the diva for his exit from a disastrous 2009 revival of Verdi's La Traviata.

Earlier this year, the singer dropped out of the company's new production of Faust. Scheduled to sing Marguerite opposite Jonas Kaufmann, Ms. Gheorghiu cited "creative differences" with the new production, which updates the German legend to the 20th centiry and makes Faust into Robert Oppenheimer. Perhaps she will use her free time to prepare another tribute, this time to Catalan soprano Victoria de los Ángeles.