At her début in the role of Amina in 1955, Callas dominated the ensembles and, at certain moments, she showed her vocal power off with hardly concealed pride. Her powers may have diminished a little in the two and a half years that passed since that time, but in Edinburgh her interpretation of the role had significantly deepened. Her Amina is less girl, less naïve, and less imbued with echoes of her immediate predecessors in the role, Lina Pagliughi and Margherita Carosio. The Edinburgh Amina is a living young woman who is rapidly learning to deal with the larger-than-life emotions that come with the libretto. The miracle is that she makes one listen to the words, while at the same time making us look beyond the rather unbelievable and silly plot. To whom should one compare this singer? At best, she invoked a haunting image of the legendary role creator, Giuditta Pasta. Throughout this recording, but especially in the final aria, her singing is full of unexpected shadings, colourings, pianissimi, bravura cadenzas and accents that fill any given part of a word with meaning and truth. When Callas sings, we are looking straight into Amina’s heart.

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The high quality tapes used as source material for this release come from a private recording made for Callas’s EMI recording producer Walter Legge, and were supplied to Testament by Legge’s widow, the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

• Nicola Zaccaria, Fiorenza Cossotto, Maria Callas, Edith Martelli, Nicola Monti, Dino Mantovani, Franco Ricciardi
• Coro e Orchestra della Piccola Scala di Milano
• Antonino Votto