Maria Callas: Her unknown repertoire is presented by the National Opera

The National Opera House presents a new video recital with the unknown repertoire of Maria Callas. HERE The video recital will premiere on December 16, 2023, and will be available for free until December 31, 2024, on the 100th anniversary of her birth.

These are works performed by the leading lyric performer from 1937 to 1945 in Athens, either as part of her conservatory exams or in performances, auditions, celebrations and recitals. GNO TV on her online television

The distinguished lyrical artist, musicologist and scholar of Maria Callas, Aris Christofellis, created and presented the new video-recital for the unknown repertoire of the great diva while simultaneously signing the music instruction and the texts.

Acclaimed and younger soloists Fani Antonelou, Vasiliki Karagianni, Nina Koufochristou, Maria Kostraki, Violetta Lusta, Chrysa Maliamani, Artemis Bogri and Mary-Ellen Nezi perform, paying a unique tribute and handing over to the world audience and future generations an audiovisual document which records the repertoire of Maria Callas chronologically and with every historical detail.

Sofia Tamvakopoulou on the piano. The bassist Tasos Apostolou participates.

Operas that she never sang again, songs by Greek composers Tosca and Cavalleria in Greek, but also popular "light" hits of the time constitute the "first repertoire" in Callas' career, in the years that laid the foundations for her later career up to the absolute top.

The arias and songs that are performed give today's listeners a complete picture of the repertoire of the eight years of Athens, but at the same time, they are also invaluable testimonies of the very idiosyncratic and defining course of Callas' student years and first professional appearances.

At the same time, they confirm the rising singer's unprecedented abilities and the influence that Greece had on the creation of her star.

The video-recital takes the form of a musical journey diary where the musical part is placed chronologically on the history.

The works are heard in the exact translations that she sang, while it is worth noting that she never performed most of them again in her later career. The tribute focuses on exactly these works that we have never heard of her and on those that she sang in Greek translations.

This musical journey is dedicated to the great Nikos Zachariou, fellow traveller, dear friend and peer of Maria Callas since those years, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth.

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