Callas's debut at Mexico City in the first performance of her Norma to have survived on records is every bit as exciting and impressive as we must be hoping to find it. The sound is subject to distortion - the women's voices harmonising in thirds seems to send the microphone into a tizzy, and many are the places where the recording of orchestra and chorus is sufficiently clear to suggest that many more snags and loose edges might show up if it were clearer. But as in all these so-called private recordings, the point is not what is at fault but what is gained which we otherwise would not have at all. And to my mind a similarly positive response is evoked by Callas herself: the recording is more valuable as an experience than as a document. It is not primarily a matter of interest, but of enjoyment. No doubt it does broaden the scope of a critical enquiry into the development of the role in Callas's performances from (almost) first to last; but that is a by-product. The deeply impressive thing is surely the extent to which 'Callas's Norma' is there, an already created entity, in this performance of 1950.
That there is an interest in tracing a development from this to subsequent recordings is unquestionable, and such matters form the subject of John Ardoin's invaluable book, The Callas Legacy (Duckworth, fourth edition: 1995). His commentary, particularly on the last act, is an enlightening companion to listening. Yet I find her genius even at this early stage repeatedly taking hold, often at points where one is not particularly expecting it. When the great aria of the first scene is over, for example, Norma announces that the holy rites are finished ('Fine al rito'), and it is almost as though the opera now begins: we are to move into action, and with what fervour! The same incidental vividness occurs almost immediately in the second scene, the short dialogue with Clotilde where Norma's confession of the conflict in her soul finds such imaginative expression, so that the marvel is already in being, not something waiting to come to life in a few years' time. And, of course, in another respect, the earlier the better where Callas is concerned, for though faults and danger-signals are already in evidence, the voice is firmer and fresher than in even the first of the studio recordings.
Otherwise there is little to cherish. Simionato's Adalgisa is neither so beautifully sung nor so memorably characterised as one would hope. Kurt Baum's voice still surprises by the depth of its timbre (quite unlike what I remember of him at Covent Garden in 1957), but remains incorrigibly stolid in style and expression. Nicola Moscona's powerful bass is unevenly produced, but his is an authoritative presence. John Ardoin thinks poorly of Guido Picco's conducting, yet I didn't find myself protesting so very often. The recording matters solely because of Callas, and when Anna Gualtieri in the insert-notes claims that this recording alone would establish Callas as 'the absolute protagonist of the lyric theatre of our century', she no doubt exaggerates (and would have been wiser to have added 'female'), but is not altogether wide of the mark.'