ONE AUDIO PIECE Scroll through this blog and you'll find a post called Maria Callas: Her Last Tosca with some excerpts recorded in performance at the Metropolitan on March 19, 1965. I have another clip from this same performance. This was Callas's return to New York for the first time in eight years, the last time she sang opera in the States, and one of her final performances in any opera. The very last was also as Tosca, in London, on July 5, 1965. She was forty-one and never sang a staged opera again. Callas's partner as the evil and menacing Baron Scarpia was the great Italian baritone Tito Gobbi (1913-1984). There was no finer actor on the operatic stage than Tito Gobbi. He was a master of makeup, attitude and of stillness. He didn't move a lot and he didn't have to. The March 1965 performance at the Met was not his return to the company. He had already been there earlier in the season, and he would return. But listen to these two giants, Gobbi and Callas, as the glamorous Floria Tosca and the sadistic Baron Scarpia. We begin with Gobbi's entrance-again pay attention to the audience's reaction at his entrance) and go on to the confrontation as Scarpia preys on Tosca's jealousy and transforms a glamorous, self assured woman into a trembling mess: [audio:callas-gobbi-for-web] And here they are together a year earlier, on February 1, 1964 at the Royal Opera in London. This production was Callas's return to the stage and one of the triumphs--perhaps the final triumph-of her career. It's the finale of Act II, the murder of Scarpia, televised "live" in performance. Its one of the few films we have of Callas in actual staged performance. [youtube IeRNp_yTr34 490 344] There have been thousands of operatic filmed, studio and staged performances since this one in February, 1964. The camera work is lousy and its too dark, but still.... Enjoy!
Christopher Purdy is Classical 101's early morning host, 7-10 a.m. weekdays. He is host and producer of Front Row Center – Classical 101’s weekly celebration of Opera and more – as well as Music in Mid-Ohio, Concerts at Ohio State, and the Columbus Symphony broadcast series. He is the regular pre-concert speaker for Columbus Symphony performances in the Ohio Theater.