Certain experiences warm the heart of a veteran reviewer, keeping his enthusiasm alive – and the first official issue of the 1952 live Norma from Covent Garden, Maria Callas’s début in the house and an occasion awaited eagerly at the time, is emphatically one of them. Like John Steane, who contributes a vivid vignette of the evening in his notes, I was present at one or other performance, and his reactions exactly tally with my own. I would add only that hearing it now, 51 years later, it seems even more arresting than I recall it to have been in the theatre.

Callas, in her vocal prime, is not only more secure than in her studio recordings, of which more anon, but also, in the theatre, she electrifies the senses through her total identification with Norma’s plight. As ever, her accomplishment of the recitative, whether tender or commanding, forms the framework for a wholly absorbing and commanding interpretation and for her marvellous delineation of Bellini’s cantilena in aria and ensemble. Together they add up to a unique and profoundly satisfying experience, fully worthy of her reputation.

‘Casta diva’ is sung with rapt, warm tone, the words quietly inflected. The scene, ‘Dormono entrambi!’, where Norma contemplates murdering her children is quite searing, the inner compulsion of ‘Teneri figli’, quite heart-rending. At the other end of the vocal spectrum she can utter the single word ‘Giura!’ with such conviction as to cow anyone in sight. Then in the final scene her performance takes on a sense of transfiguration, her voice gaining a visionary quality as Norma prepares for death to atone for her sin. Try the start of ‘Qual cor tradisti’, opening the final-scene trio, to hear what I mean.

The support, compared to what we often hear today in this sort of piece, is of the highest calibre. Ebe Stignani, sounding younger than in the 1954 studio set, is inspired in both voice and accentuation. In the theatre as JBS and I recall, at her first entrance, ‘Sgombre è sacra selva’, she flooded the house with glorious sound. Later she duets with Callas as to the manner born. As the callous Pollione, the much underrated Mirto Picchi sings almost too well: a tenor of the old Italian school, with the concomitant virtues of pleasing timbre and faultless legato. In Pollione’s appeal to Adalgisa to come back to him, in Act 1, ‘Vieni in Roma’, Picchi produces such a seductive mezza-voce line as to melt the heart of any woman.

Giacomo Vaghi, who left all-too-few examples of his imposing art, was a reigning bass in Rome, in the 1930s and ’40s; here he proves just why – with his authoritative utterance in a secure, imposing bass – he was so admired. A bonus is the youthful Joan Sutherland (then in her first season as a contracted artist in the house), as Clothilde, in what must be her first recording.

It is odd that EMI should issue this version at the same time as the 1954 studio effort as a Great Recording of the Century. I would place the Royal Opera House set rather than this one in that category, or even the 1960 remake (listed above), in better sound and with preferable secondary singers – Mario Filippeschi is a particular trial as Pollione in 1954.

By the side of the live performance it sounds boxy and studio-bound. Above all, Gui at Covent Garden instils far more life in the score than does the slightly routine Serafin, and the Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus are superior to their counterparts at La Scala. As for Callas, excellent as she is in 1954, it is the 1952 performance that carries greater force and conviction. Her voice sounds truer in the theatre acoustic than up against the microphone in 1954. The live performance has some distortion at vocal and orchestral climaxes but that worried me hardly at all given the riveting performance.

I urge anyone new to Callas to try to hear this wholly compelling experience, now my preferred choice for this work, to the paler studio version. If you want a better-recorded, stereo version, go for the 1960 set, with Christa Ludwig and Franco Corelli as excellent support. Callas herself, though in frailer voice, has by then added further refinements to her reading, but the spontaneity of 1952 is not quite there.