The Callas Butterfly and the Callas Traviata

In operatic history, there have been singers who have made such an impact on a particular role that they can be said to have ‘owned’ it. They cast a shadow so great over the role that any singer following in their footsteps years down the road labours under an immense weight of comparison. For many, Callas’ Tosca was such a role. “There are just some performers in some roles whom you can only ever hope to equal,” said soprano Grace Bumbry of the Callas Tosca, “because you know you can never surpass them.”

And to Tosca, you can add a string of others – Norma, Medea, Gioconda…

But for me, there are two roles that Callas never ‘owned’ which nevertheless are supreme testaments to her greatness, and if forced onto a desert island, these are the Callas recordings that I would clasp to my heart.

One of these is a role which Callas only ever sang on stage for 3 performances and which has never been at all associated with her: Madama Butterfly.

The other is a role of which a live recording from Lisbon in 1958, when unleashed on an unsuspecting world some years later, managed to overturn the existing evaluations of all available recordings: Violetta in La Traviata.

Callas and Butterfly
In the Callas Butterfly, I have always marvelled at the amazing combination of sensitivity, intelligence, awareness of irony, and curiously, strength. Strength is a surprising quality to describe the tragic Butterfly, but this is perhaps the hallmark of Callas’ performance, the quality that makes her performance stand out head and shoulders in a crowded field. Hers is a portrait of a human being grappling with the human condition, tussling with it, struggling to fend off the array of antagonistic forces that have gathered around her. The going down at the end is the epic end of a heroic battle. The 15 year-old Cio-Cio-San never had a chance, of course, and we know that. But SHE doesn’t. And this is precisely why you are pulled into her extraordinary struggle.

The power of the opera lies in the audience knowing what Butterfly does not know, and the libretto is peppered with dramatic irony of the kid that brings tears to your eyes from the word go. In the love-duet, for example, Butterfly says to Pinkerton words to the effect, “They tell me that in your country, butterflies are caught and pinned to a board for display”, and “I’m afraid to love, to die of love”. To which Pinkerton laughingly replies, “Don’t be silly, love gives life, not death!”. The libretto is one of the most intelligent opera scripts that I know.

And with Callas, you start crying at the start of Act 2 (not the usual Act 3), at the moment she sings "Un Bel Di" – because she sings it as a narrative to her maid, reassuring the maid that one ought to have faith, that one fine day Pinkerton will indeed return. And she describes the scene as she sees it in her mind, indeed as she has seen it in her mind for the past 3 years: first, you will see a plume of smoke from an incoming ship at the harbour, then you will see a small figure walking up the hill from afar, and then, this figure will begin to call out Butterfly’s name.…

Callas’s version of this aria is the most stunning and moving version of the aria I’ve ever heard. At the core is the actor’s art, as I’ve learned as an actor myself: you put yourself into the moment, and you say your words with total belief. And this is what you hear from Callas. You hear her absolute belief in her own words: Yes, one fine day, all this that I tell you will come to pass. There are no tears in her version, just a simple affirmation of a strong belief in human goodness, that all will be right with the world. And hearing that, you just….

Callas’ version of “Un Bel Di” is one that I refuse to listen to in recorded anthologies, because it can’t and shouldn’t be cut out brutally from the context in which she had intended it to be heard. If you ever find it in an anthology of the world’s favourite arias, the advisable thing is to skip the track when you come to it. “Un Bel Di” is not “Vissi D’arte.”

Callas charts an emotional journey that leaves you shattered at the end. Like her Traviata, when the final chords come at curtain’s close, you just sit there for a long while, not knowing what to do with yourself. I drag out her Butterfly and Traviata at 5-7 year intervals to have a good listen. They are the only operas that I never play while doing the ironing. I don’t want to de-value the experience. Every 5-7 years when I listen to them, I feel that I have totally contacted with someone, and I feel a catharsis, a washing out from within. And the years have only served to increase my appreciation, not diminished it in the usual way of one growing out of one’s youthful favourites.

Callas and Traviata
Callas made a commercial recording of Verdi’s La Traviata in 1952. Listening to it, you will note that there is nothing of special distinction about it. It is as good as any of the hundreds and hundreds of recordings of this popular opera. Then, sometime in the 1970s, EMI released a recording from a live performance in Lisbon in the year 1958. This recording caused a total re-evaluation of all Traviata recordings in the catalogues.

The full impact of this Lisbon 1958 Traviata lies in the final Act. Other singers can manage to get close to Callas in Acts 1 and 2, but no one has yet surpassed her final Act in Lisbon. It is extraordinary – it is the smallest final act Traviata I have ever heard. The dying Violetta shrinks with each passing minute. Violetta shrinks and shrinks until she is virtually part of the carpet. That’s HOW she dies. We all know there is no singer who can explode at the end of an opera like Callas could, but in Lisbon she implodes into smithereens and silence. While Callas’ Butterfly goes down with guns blazing, her Violetta implodes into nothingness.

Callas only achieved this for her extraordinary series of Traviata performances in 1958, not just in the Lisbon performances, but also in the Covent Garden Traviatas of a couple of months before, to judge by the reviews.

Callas went for broke in her 1958 Traviatas. I saw a You-Tube video of an interview with the conductor of the Lisbon Traviata, and he revealed that Callas had a massive struggle with her final letter-reading aria. The aria ends on a rising line, and Callas wanted to make the final high note disappear into a wisp of sound. During some of the performances she didn’t make that note as it would crack, the rising line demanding huge breath control for a diminuendo on a high note. He advised her to drop the idea for her own reputation, but Callas replied that she would rather crack than do it any other way as this was how that phrase ought to be sung. Callas took her art to masochistic extremes, tenor Jon Vickers observed. And so you have it – on some nights she didn’t make that note and on others she did. The Lisbon recording now commercially available was of an evening when she did make it.

The entire final Act is extraordinary, and for me as an experienced theatre actor now, I am trying to analyze it from the point of view of the actor’s art – it’s all about inhabiting the role, being clear about your intentions, being able to execute these intentions ...

On You-Tube there are now actually clips of this legendary Lisbon Traviata, but they are dim and distantly shot. But I got a sense of Callas on stage for this Violetta. For a performer who was renowned for her ability to move commandingly on stage, she was mostly still, and moved very little, even in the gaiety of the Act 1 party scene. And this was remarkably in line with what you hear on the recording. So it really should be no surprise. This was a dying Violetta right from the beginning, conserving her energies all the way – an extraordinary conception of the role which I have never seen on stage in the many Traviatas I’ve witnessed.

And oh yes, the 1958 Traviatas in London and Lisbon were also her final Traviatas. 1958 was a wonderful year for Callas. She was then at the physical form she wanted to be in order to be credible on stage, having lost the astonishing amount of weight that many also attributed as the cause of her rapid vocal decline in the last half of the 1950s. The voice had also acquired a new translucence much needed for a role such as Traviata (which I believe is a result of the weight loss based on evidence of her recordings pre and post the event). A mere two years further down the road, around about 1960, her recordings would show a voice that was no longer acceptable, even to a diehard admirer like me. Callas vocally limped on for a few more years as her stage appearances became less frequent and gave her final opera performance, as Tosca, at Covent Garden in 1965 (by some accounts, the 'best acted Tosca in opera's history' but with a sadly thinned-out voice, much reduced in volume, and shrill and wobbly in its high range).

1958, then, was a very good year. There was a glow and a glory, just before the end. After these final Traviatas, Callas never returned to the role again, so these Traviatas may also be called accurately “The Callas Final Traviatas”.

And as an actor, I can only say this: What a way to bid farewell to a role. What an exit.