Warning: lousy sound alert! Also, this is 1962, and the voice has developed those issues which prevent many people from listening to her – the spread at the top etc. Despite this, it’s a lesson in operatic acting, and an unexpected one. Watch her body when the horns make their stabbing sounds at the beginning – it’s as if she’s been stabbed. Again at the strings leading into ‘O regina’ and again at each subsequent transition, the body is one with the music.
Compare, if you like, someone like Elena Obratsova in performance (http://youtu.be/mguac0EuQoU). Music in the pit, acting on the stage, little connection. ‘Ti maledico’ might be addressed to someone else. Or compare her gesture at the final ‘O belta’ to Callas’s conventional-seeming but subtle folded hands.
