At any time up until the late ’50s, one could point to a given performance, or parts of performances, in support of categorizing Callas as almost any known sort of soprano. The argument for “pure high coloratura” was never very strong, and that for “dramatic soprano” wanes by the year from 1955 on, but the length of pitch range, the breadth of color span, the command of soft-to-loud and of florid movement—not to mention her insistence on enlisting these for ultimate artistic effect—were so extraordinary that even their remnants could persuade, at least for a while, and especially in the studio environment. But when all these were at full flood—if not always under optimal control—what was their distribution in the voice? The logical place to look first is, of course, the passaggio, the area centered around the E and F above middle C, where the lower sound family (the chest register de Hidalgo worked to activate) must transition to the upper if the voice is to maintain a working balance. Callas’ chest register is strong and vibrant. She is able to modulate, to blend with it and shade the open vowels when that’s called for expressively, particularly on the descent. She can also bend down into it in full voice, and drive it excitingly from below, giving the dramatic mezzos she is singing against (Oralia Dominguez in Aïda, Fedora Barbieri in Gioconda, both enthusiastic exponents of the same device) an even match. You will find plenty of examples of all these usages in those performances, and of the blended, settled sort in the Trovatore, too. For the full chest tone carried up into the passaggio, the best example is the sequence from the middle C# up into the fermata on E#, then F# on “dentro l’a-a-vel” near the end of “Suicidio!” Callas sings this ff, wringing the E# for all it’s worth, then carrying it without compromise into the F#, the tone pulsating and the open vowels still undistorted, with no shallowing in the position. It’s perilous-sounding, and partly on that account, thrilling.

So the Callas of these early years seems quite in command of her chest voice, able to turn it to her expressive purposes at will, and to run the occasional calculated risk. What went on as the voice departed for higher regions? We’ve noted instances of “coasting” through lower-middle phrases in the Liebestod. But that was in a studio recording, in phrases not under pressure, with the pronuncia clear and open. Much more the default setting for the early Callas in the octave above the passaggio is a darker, voluminous, propulsive sound that is clearly of a more house-filling format than we heard from her in New York, or than we hear on her later recordings, even of full dramatic roles. (The EMI Trovatore, Aïda, and Gioconda are excellent points of comparison.) It is freely emitted, and there is plenty of play in it (of limberness, of dynamics) in this middle octave. In terms of size, it is a fair enough outgrowth of the lower register—both are “open-throated.” But there has been some positional displacement. There are two ways of attaining a dark overall coloration in a voice. One is by depressing the larynx below its natural resting position, thereby creating a longer resonating tube that favors a darker timbre. There’s no indication that Callas worked on this—de Hidalgo would certainly not have taught it, and it does not comport well with the fleet ductility of Callas’ singing. The other is through pharyngeal expansion, which tends to favor the roomier, more malleable part of the acoustical complex over the smaller, more rigid spaces below. An impressively fat, rich tone can be secured this way, one that seems to lend some body to the weak notes just above the passaggio, and to liberate the voice from the hold of the chest adjustment. But whether or not it does these things in a functionally efficient way depends on whether or not in the course of stretching into this expansion, the singer has maintained a constant posture in the relationship between the upper and lower parts of the resonating tract. All too often, the yawny action tilts the posture into a “covered” position, with darkly modified vowels, and fails to pick up the bracing from the lower position that would enable the singer to continue upward with strong tone and clear, natural vowels. A sophisticated version of that positional slippage, I believe, invaded Callas’ voice as she charged out into these big roles.