Word: scala
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Milan's La Scala heard Alban Berg's atonal opera Wozzeck for the first time last week and, somewhat to its own surprise, was impressed...
Mitropoulos and La Scala had worked hard to make Wozzeck a success. When Italian sopranos showed little interest in learning the exacting role of Wozzeck's faithless mistress Marie, Mitropoulos gave it to Soprano Dorothy Dow, of Galveston, Texas. The part of the plodding, unhappy Wozzeck went to Italian Baritone Tito Gobbi. Milan admired them both. Another successful touch was the scenery; instead of going in strong for realism, Designer Gianni Ratto made his sets shadowy and changeable, to keep the audience under the emotional spell of Berg's music...
...first opening night at La Scala, last December, 30-year-old Soprano Callas made a smashing hit in Verdi's Sicilian Vespers. Milan critics kissed their fingertips in ecstasy over her sureness, her "miraculous throat" and the "phosphorescent beauty" of her middle range. Her performances of Norma (eight of them) were enthusiastic sellouts. Last week she was collecting more bravos in a difficult role in which even her most ardent admirers had feared for her: the vocally acrobatic part of Constanze in Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio...
...years ago it was a different story. La Scala heard her then and yawned. Maria Callas thinks she knows why: "I have a funny kind of voice, and often people don't like it the first time they hear it. One has to hear me more and more." After singing in the Italian operatic "sticks"-Parma, Florence, Rome-she finally got a chance at La Scala when leading Soprano Renata Tebaldi fell sick...
Maria Callas is married to an Italian industrialist and considers Italy her home. She would like to come to the Met, which has made her offers, but only for the right money and the right operas-her La Scala hit, I Puritani, for instance. Says she: "I don't gamble in my singing. If an opera is good for me, I know...