La Marseillaise, overture to Giuseppe Verdi’s La Forza del destino

"Norma" by Bellini

"Il Trovatore" de Verdi

Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Rossini

"Tosca" by Puccini

Experience the exceptional concert by the soprano Maria Callas at the Paris Opera in 1958, broadcast live in its entirety on Eurovision and accompanied by commentary from Pierre Tchernia.For her inaugural recital in France, Maria Callas performed arias from the operas La Forza del destino, Il Trovatore, Norma, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Tosca, accompanied by the Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Georges Sebastian.During intermissions, both backstage during set changes and within the audience, Pierre Tchernia and Pierre Dumayet conduct numerous interviews with notable figures about Maria Callas' concert, including Jean Cocteau, Patachou, Brigitte Bardot, Gilbert Bécaud, Zizi Jeanmaire, and Roland Petit, along with the Begum Aga Khan. © INA, La grande nuit de l’opéra - Realisation: Roger Benamou, 1958

Maria Callas Concert POP 2

Maria Callas 1958 2

Maria Callas 1958

Experience the exceptional concert by the soprano Maria Callas at the Paris Opera in 1958, broadcast live in its entirety on Eurovision and accompanied by commentary from Pierre Tchernia. For her inaugural recital in France, Maria Callas performed ar

The Légion d'honneur's gala in 1958

Maria Callas' exceptional concert at the Palais Garnier (1958)

Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 into a modest but relatively well-to-do family in the hamlet of Le Roncole, near Busseto. He received his first musical training from the village organist. In 1824, he became the organist at the church in Busseto. After following music lessons with the organist and composer Ferdinando Provesi, he was noticed by Antonio Barezzi, a spirits merchant and music aficionado who also founded the Filarmonici (Societa filarmonica), the town’s amateur orchestra. Barezzi would become Verdi’s patron and sponsor and the composer would ultimately marry Barezzi’s daughter Margherita in 1836. A stipend enabled him to continue his studies in Milan where he took private lessons with Vincenzo Lavigna, a teacher at La Scala, and a friend of Rossini. On the recommendations of the impresario Bartolomeo Merelli, his first opera, Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio was performed at La Scala in Milan. For a short while following the death of his two children and then his wife Margherita, and after the relative fiasco that befell his second opera, Un giorno di regno, Verdi considered abandoning music altogether. However, he started composing again when Merelli offered him the libretto for Nabucco. That opera was a huge success at its premiere at La Scala on March 9, 1842 and it did not take long before all of Italy was singing Va pensiero, the anthem in which the chorus of slaves lament their lost freedom. From then on, Verdi became the bard of Italian unification. Most of the works that followed would be operas with patriotic undertones (I Lombardi alla prima crocciata, Ernani, Giovanna d’Arco, Attila, La Battaglia di Legnano…). In 1847, Verdi left for London for the world premiere of I Masnadieri, then settled in Paris where he met up with Giuseppina Strepponi, who would create the role of Abigaille. They would never be separated again. Verdi purchased the property at Sant’Agata, near Busseto and openly enlisted in the struggle for the liberation of Italy, which was then occupied by the Austrians. After 1850, Verdi was unrivalled in Italy. In particular, his popular trilogy, Rigoletto – Il Trovatore – La Traviata dates from this period.Les Vêpres siciliennes (Paris, 1855), Simon Boccanegra (La Fenice in Venice, 1857), Un ballo in maschera (Rome, 1859), La Forza del destino (Saint Petersburg, 1862), Don Carlos (Paris, 1867), Aida (Cairo, 1871), the Messa di Requiem (Milan, 1874), Otello (Milan, 1887), and Falstaff (Milan, 1893) would follow. In 1861, he was elected deputy of Busseto. He passed away in Milan on January 27, 1901. With no heir at the time of his death, Verdi bequeathed his copyrights to the retirement home for aging musicians that he had founded in Milan.

Born in Catania, Italy, in 1801, a contemporary of Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini was, at first, considered as the heir of Rossini. Yet, he was able to distance from the Rossinian example, as he strove for an ideal of virtuosity. Bellini always put first in his work the quality of the melody, the search for dramatic expression and the portrayal of emotions. His early death (he died in 1835) deprived the history of a musician who could have become Verdi's only great rival. Raised in Naples, he studied composition with Giovanni Furno, Giacomo Tritto and Niccolo Zingarelli. He had not yet completed his studies when he created a small opera entitled Adelson e Salvini (1825) on the conservatory stage. Almost immediately he was commissioned to write Bianca e Fernando (1826) for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. The piece was so well received that Bellini was immediately invited to compose Il pirata (1827) for La Scala in Milan, which was a great success. Bellini went on to compose La straniera (The Foreign Woman), Zaira and I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830). His fame was already growing when he returned to Milan to give La sonnambula, which earned him an international reputation. At the end of that same year, and again in Milan, he had his masterpiece Norma performed. In 1833 Beatrice de Tende was premiered in Venice and it was then that, thanks to Rossini's influence, he was commissioned to compose an opera for the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. He settled in Puteaux, where he wrote I puritani, performed in 1835 to great acclaim. The composer died a few days later.

Gioacchino Rossini was born in Pesaro on February 29, 1792. Son of musicians (his father played the horn and his mother sang in troupes of fairground operas), he studied singing and harmony in Bologna under the guidance of the abbot Mattei. At the age of 18, he had his first opera buffa performed in Venice, La Cambiale di matrimonio, which was soon followed by works of the same genre (L'Inganno felice, L'Occasione fa il ladro...). At the age of 20, three of his operas had already been performed, and a year later the number would rise to ten. In 1813, the creation of Tancredi, also in Venice, opened the doors to success and made him the undisputed master of the Italian opera scene for many years. The works follow one another at a frenetic pace: The Barber of Seville and Otello in 1816, La Cenerentola and Armide in 1817, La Donna del lago in 1819, Maometto II in 1821, Semiramis in 1823... Between 1818 and 1822, he is artistic director of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. In 1822, he married the singer Isabella Colbran (1785-1845). From 1824, he settled in Paris. He was appointed head of the Théâtre Italien, a position he kept for two years, then First Composer to the King and General Inspector of singing in France. Le Voyage à Reims was created at the Théâtre Italien for the coronation of Charles X. Rossini reused part of the music in Le Comte Ory in 1828. His last opera, Guillaume Tell, created at the Paris Opera on August 3, 1829, was a triumph. In 1830, the revolution made him lose his royal offices; he separated from his wife and practically abandoned his musical activity. He remarried Olympe Pélissier and composed a Stabat Mater, commissioned by a Spanish prelate, as well as a number of occasional pieces, and numerous chamber music works, collected in a series of books entitled Péchés de vieillesse, often tinged with humor. From 1836 to 1848, he lived in Italy and then settled permanently in France. He died in Passy on November 13, 1868. Rossini left all his belongings to his native town, Pesaro, where a festival is held every year that has brought back to life many of the composer's forgotten works, some of which have since entered the repertoire of major opera houses.

Giacomo Puccini was born in 1858 in Lucca, Italy, to a family of organists (his father was a notorious theoretician and music teacher). A performance of Verdi's Aida, which he saw in Pisa in 1876, convinced him that his vocation was to become a composer. He studied at the Milan Conservatory with, among others, Amilcare Ponchielli. On Ponchielli's advice, he took part in a composition competition launched by the Sonzogno publishing house in 1883 for a one-act opera. Although he did not win the prize his piece, Le Villi, was staged in 1884 in Milan with some success. The music publisher Ricordi then commissioned him a second opera, Edgar. His third opera, Manon Lescaut, brought him lasting fame and marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Together, they wrote Puccini's three greatest masterpieces: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904). In 1910, the premiere of La Fanciulla del West took place at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Puccini then composed a lighter piece, La Rondine, performed without much success at the Monte-Carlo Opera. After that, Puccini slowed down his compositional work. A car accident left him lame for the rest of his life and it was not until 1918 that The Triptych (Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi) premiered at the Metropolitan Opera. He died in Brussels in 1924 of throat cancer. His last opera, Turandot, remained unfinished. The last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano. However, when Toscanini premiered Turandot at La Scala in Milan on 25 April 1926, he hold his baton to mark the point Puccini had reached before dying and turned to the audience: “Here the master laid down his pen. He stopped there when he died”. Puccini also wrote a number of religious works (Salve regina, Messa di Gloria).

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