Artist: Maria Callas, Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Tullio Serafin
Album: Puccini: Manon Lescaut
Genre: Classical
Release Date: 1957/2014
Audio Format:: FLAC (tracks) 24 bit, 96 kHz
Duration: 02:00:44
Total Tracks: 35
Total Size: 1,24 GB

Tracklist:

Giacomo Puccini 1858–1924
Manon Lescaut
Opera in four acts
Libretto: Domenico Oliva, Giulio Ricordi, Luigi Illica, Giuseppe Giacosa & Marco Praga after Abbé Prévost

ACT ONE
1 Ave, sera gentile (Edmondo/Coro/Des Grieux) 5.49
2 Tra voi, belle, brune e bionde (Des Grieux/Coro) 1.17
3 Ma bravo! (Edmondo/Coro) 1.52
4 Discendono, vediam! (Coro/Edmondo/Lescaut/Oste/Des Grieux/Geronte) 2.10
5 Cortese damigella, il priego mio accettate (Des Grieux/Manon/Lescaut) 4.15
6 Donna non vidi mai (Des Grieux) 2.36
7 La tua ventura ci rassicura (Edmondo/Coro/Geronte/Lescaut/Oste) 6.12
8 La tua Proserpina di resisterti (Edmondo/Des Grieux) 1.50
9 Vedete? Io son fedele alla parola mia (Manon/Des Grieux/Lescaut) 4.26
10 Non c’è più vino? (Lescaut/Des Grieux/Manon/Edmondo/Geronte/Oste) 2.59
11 Cavalli pronti avete? (Lescaut/Geronte/Edmondo/Coro) 2.56

ACT TWO
12 Dispettosetto questo riccio! 2.34
13 Sei splendida e lucente! (Manon/Lescaut) 2.25
14 In quelle trine morbide (Manon) 2.15
15 Poiché tu vuoi saper (Lescaut/Manon) 2.56
16 Che ceffi son costor? (Lescaut/Manon/Musico/Coro) 2.14
17 Paga costor! (Manon/Lescaut) 1.18
18 Vi prego, signorina (Maestro di ballo/Geronte/Manon/Coro) 8.37
19 Oh, sarò la più bella! (Manon/Des Grieux) 8.19
20 Ah!…Affè, madamigella (Manon/Geronte/Des Grieux) 3.11
21 Ah, Manon, mi tradisce (Des Grieux/Manon) 2.36
22 Lescaut!…Tu qui? (Des Grieux/Manon/Lescaut/Sergente) 3.29
23 Intermezzo (Orchestra) 5.19

ACT THREE
24 Ansia eterna, crudel (Des Grieux/Lescaut) 2.50
25 Manon!…Des Grieux! (Des Grieux/Manon/Lampionaio) 4.38
26 All’armi! All’armi! (Coro/Lescaut/Des Grieux/Manon) 0.58
27 Il passo m’aprite! (Sergente/Comandante/Coro) 0.50
28 Rosetta! (Sergente/Coro/Lescaut/Manon/Des Grieux) 3.59
29 Presto in fila! Marciate! (Sergente/Des Grieux/Coro/Comandante) 0.40
30 Ah, non v’avvicinate!…Come io piango ed imploro (Des Grieux/Comandante) 2.57

ACT FOUR
31 Tutta su me ti posa 3.10
32 Manon, senti, amor mio!…Vedi, son io che piango 3.55
33 E nulla! Nulla! (Des Grieux/Manon) 2.44
34 Sola, perduta, abbandonata (Manon) 5.00
35 Fra le tue braccia, amore (Manon/Des Grieux) 7.07

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1957, only three days after the company had completed Turandot. On vinyl the sound was not an unqualified success – perhaps one reason, combined with anxiety about some of Callas’s unsteadier top notes, why the original release was delayed for three years. These problems seemed to vanish, however, once the recording was digitally remastered for CD. Manon is one of four roles – the others being Nedda, Mimì and Carmen – that Callas recorded without having sung them on stage. This does not seem from her performance to have been any barrier to her accustomed method of plundering both music and text of a role new to her for psychological insights. Such interpretative understanding led Callas to present Manon throughout as the simple country girl. This holds whether she is precisely observing Puccini’s frequent ‘con semplicità’ instruction in Act I, transparently acting her new social position as Geronte’s kept woman, yielding to flaming passion at the return to her life of Des Grieux (both Act II) or dying in the Louisiana desert (Act IV). In this final scena, ‘Sola, perduta, abbandonata’, Callas finds the same uncanny empty tone in her voice that she used for other characters on the verge of death, in particular Mimì and Violetta.
The score of Manon Lescaut is frequently criticised for the supposed incoherence of its libretto (no fewer than six hands were involved, including Leoncavallo and Puccini himself) and its over-the-top immaturity. But Callas is careful throughout to reserve her emotional outbursts for where they will best tell a story whose almost filmic gaps anticipate later Puccini. Her way of doing this was often to isolate and concentrate on certain phrases within a set-piece. ‘Un freddo che m’agghiaccia’ catches the freezing cold of Manon’s feelings about loveless aristocratic life, ‘tu, tu, amore tu’ her feelings for Des Grieux (both in Act II) and ‘terra di pace mi sembrava questa’ (‘this seemed a peaceful land to me’) her hopes for salvation even in her final exile. –MIKE ASHMAN, 2014