Armida

There are roles Callas sang a hundred times, and others she sang for a single season. Armida belongs to the second category — and it may be the most vertiginous of them all.

Rossini's opera, premiered in Naples in 1817, had all but vanished from the stage since the nineteenth century: its sorceress demands a virtuosity no longer to be found, an impossible upper register, the agility of a coloratura soprano combined with the temperament of a tragedian. At the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, in April 1952, conducted by Tullio Serafin, Maria Callas took it on — and the score became playable again, for the space of three performances.

She never sang the role again. A live recording survives, and it is enough to make the stakes clear: this is not athletic display, it is a character — an enchantress who loves and who loses — whose virtuosity is her very language. It is the whole Callas argument, condensed into three evenings.

Armida says something essential about her: she did not merely perform the repertoire, she reopened whole tracts of it that had been thought unplayable. Bel canto owes her its revival.

In the Foundation's collection

Photographs, programmes and documents from the Italian seasons of the early 1950s — the years of the revivals — are preserved in the Foundation's collection. Discover the collection · Licensing

← All roles