Imogene is, IMO, one of Callas's great roles, up there with Norma, Violetta and Medea. By the time she did this 1959 recording -- live in concert in New York -- her voice could no longer do justice to the more stratospheric regions of the role. But the intensity and commitment of her performance are evident, as is her understanding of the desperation and madness in Bellini's creation. Unlike Leonora in La Forza del Destino, another one of Callas's great "torn" characters who resigns herself to God with Verdi's long arching melodies, Imogene expresses her anguish in feverish roulades. The choral work of the first part of the finale is amongst the finest Bellini's written -- up there with the magical Puritani act I end, which he composed years after this. Donizetti is said to have been affected by Bellini's treatment of madness in his composition of another bel canto masterpiece, Lucia di Lammermoor; but whereas Lucia's madness haunts us with the crepuscular virtuosity of the mad scene, Imogene's grips us by the throat. There is no greater manipulator of the voice than Bellini, and no better exponent of Bellini's music than Maria Callas.

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