Maria Callas - Sings Great Arias From French Operas (1961/2014) [HDTracks]

This first Collos a Paris album raises the question of language. The young Maria Kalogeropoulou, whose mother tongue was the English of New York and who, having spoken little Greek while in the USA, had had to improve her knowledge of the language after moving to Greece (in 1937), began learning both Italian and French during her studies with her main teacher, the Spanish soprano Elvira de Hidalgo. However, in the years she spent working in Greece, she only ever sang in Greek-language productions, with the exception of a 1942 production of Tosco that boasted two casts, one performing in Greek, the other in Italian - Callas appeared in both. As early as the late 1930s she had begun studying the virtuoso French repertoire with Hidalgo, including some of the numbers that she later recorded for this album, such as the bravura aria 'Je suis Titania'. By the time she moved to Paris, therefore, she was already both musically and stylistically well versed in this repertoire, despite never having sung in French on stage. Her new encounter with the language served only to heighten her interest in French music, although sadly she never appeared in French roles in the opera house, only in the recording studio. We can hear from this recital what a wonderful Dalila or Charlotte she would have made.
The earliest surviving recording of Callas in French is the aria from Louise, made in 1954 at a concert in San Remo. In 1956, she gave a concert performance in Milan - and in Italian - of Ophelie's mad scene from Ambroise Thomas's Homlet. Two years later, for an album of three extended mad scenes, she recorded Ophelie in French, alongside the pazzie from Anna Bolena and Il Pirata. This was her first studio recording in the language, and proved a real masterstroke, suiting the myriad colours of her voice to perfection. There followed the two Collos a Poris albums, this first set recorded at Easter 1961, the second in 1963. Her final encounter with French came a year later, with the complete recording of Cormen, a work she never sang on stage, and from which she had already recorded two of the highlights for this disc (without chorus): the Hobonero and the Seguedille.