Maria Callas

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Maria Callas by Cecil Beaton, London, 1957

Maria Callas (Greek: Μαρία Κάλλας) (December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano and perhaps the best-known opera singer of the post-World War II period. She combined an impressive bel canto technique with great dramatic gifts. An extremely versatile singer, her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria, to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini, to Verdi, Puccini, and in her early career, the music dramas of Wagner. Her remarkable musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed La Divina.

Early Life

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Evangelia, Mary Anna, Jackie, and George Callas, Circa 1925

According to her birth certificate, Maria Callas was born Sophia Cecelia Kalos in New York City on December 2, 1923 to Greek parents George Kalogeropoulos and Evangelia "Litsa" (sometimes "Litza") Dimitriadou, though she was christened Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou—the feminine form of Kalogeropoulos—(Greek: Μαρία Άννα Σοφία Καικιλία Καλογεροπούλου). Callas' parents had moved to New York while Evangelia was pregnant with Maria, and had shortened the surname Kalogeropoulos first to "Kalos" and subsequently to "Callas" in order to make it more manageable. Some have said that they moved for a fresh start after the death of their second child, a son named Vasili, and that Evangelia was so disappointed that her third child was not a boy that she refused to hold the newborn baby Callas or even to look at her for several days; Callas's relationship with her mother would remain difficult throughout her life.

Childhood, move to Greece

Callas's parents had a difficult marriage. Evangelia felt that she had moved down in social status through her marriage and her move to New York, while George was unhappy with his wife favoring their elder daughter, and he disapproved of Evangelia's pressuring of "Mary" to sing(Callas's pre-teen ambition was dentistry). In 1937, Callas's mother moved back to Athens with her two daughters, primarily to pursue 13-year-old Maria's singing career. The pressure to sing and perform from a very young age, in addition to what Callas perceived as her mother's preference for her beautiful older daughter Iakintha (Jackie), led to Callas's holding a lifelong resentment towards her mother and sister. Callas would later recall being the "fat, ugly sister" and having to constantly work and sing as a child, adding, "I should have had a wonderful childhood. I didn't."

Relationship with mother

In public, Callas blamed the strained relationship with her mother on her unhappy childhood spent singing and working at her Evangelia's insistence. When asked by Norman Ross whether she would pressure her own talented child to sing, Callas' answer was "Decidedly no! Children should have a wonderful childhood. I didn't." However, according to Callas's husband and her close friend Giulietta Simionato, Maria related to them that her mother, who did not work, pressured her to "go out with various men" to bring home money and food during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. Simionato was convinced that Callas "managed to remain untouched", but Maria never forgave Evangelia for what she perceived as a kind of prostitution forced on her by her mother: Callas refused to see Evangelia after 1950, and after 1952, she ceased all communication with her mother.

Education

Callas received her musical education in Athens. Initially, her mother tried to enroll her at the prestigious Athens Conservatoire, without success. At the audition, her voice, still untrained, failed to impress, while the conservatoire's director Filoktitis Oikonomidis refused to accept her without her satisfying the theoretic prerequisites (solfege). In the summer of 1937, her mother visited Maria Trivella at the younger Greek National Conservatoire, asking her to take Mary as a student for a modest fee. In 1957, Trivella recalled her impression of "Mary, a very plump young girl, wearing big glasses for her myopia:"

"The tone of the voice was warm, lyrical, intense; it swirled and flared like a flame and filled the air with melodious reverberations like a carillon. It was by any standards an amazing phenomenon, or rather it was a great talent that needed control, technical training, and strict discipline in order to shine with all its brilliance".

Trivella agreed to tutor Callas completely, waiving her tuition fees, but no sooner had Callas started her formal lessons and vocal excercises than Trivella began to feel that Mary was not a contralto, as she had been told, but a dramatic soprano. Subsequently, they began working on raising the tessitura of Mary's voice and to lighten its timbre. Trivella recalled Mary as "A model student. Fanatical, uncompromising, dedicated to her studies heart and soul. Her progress was phenomenal. She studied five or six hours a day. ... Within six months, she was singing the most difficult arias in the international opera repertoire with the utmost musicality". On April 11, 1938, in her public debut, Callas ended the recital of Trivella's class at the Parnassos music hall with a duet from Tosca.

Callas studied with Trivella for two years before her mother secured another audition at the Athens Conservatoire with the well-known soprano Elvira de Hidalgo. Callas auditioned with "Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster", a performance de Hidalgo described as a "tempestuous, extravagant cascade of sounds, as yet uncontrolled but full of drama and emotion". He agreed to take her as a pupil immediately, but Callas's mother asked de Hidalgo to wait for a year, as Callas would be graduating from the National Conservatoire and could begin working. On April 2, 1939, Callas made her debut at the Olympia Theater, as Santuzza in Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, and in the fall of the same year she enrolled at the Athens Conservatoire in Elvira de Hidalgo's class.

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Callas in Athens in 1944

Early operatic career in Greece

After several appearances as a student, Callas began appearing in secondary roles at the Greek National Opera. De Hidalgo was instrumental in securing roles for her, allowing Callas to earn a small salary, which would help her and her family get through the difficult war years.

Callas made her debut in a leading role in August 1942 as Tosca, going on to sing the role of Marta in Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland at the Olympia Theater after several other concerts, to favorable reviews:

"The singer who took the part of Marta, that new star in the Greek firmament, with a matchless depth of feeling, gave a theatrical interpretation well up to the standard of a tragic actress. About her exceptional voice with its astonishing natural fluency, I do not wish to add anything to the words of Alexandra Lalaouni: 'Kaloyeropoulou is one of those God-given talents that one can only marvel at.'"

Following these performances, even Callas's detractors began to refer to her as "The God-Given." While watching Callas rehearse Fidelio, rival soprano Anna (Zozó) Remoundou asked a colleague, "Could it be that there is something divine and we haven't realized it?"

Following Tiefland, Callas sang the role of Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana again and followed it with O Protomastoras at the ancient Odeon of Herodus Atticus theater at the foot of the Acropolis, and performed in Fidelio at the ancient Odeon theater.

After the liberation of Greece, de Hidalgo advised Callas to establish herself in Italy. Callas proceeded to give a series of concerts around Greece, and then, against her teacher's advice, she returned to America to see her father and to further pursue her career. When she left Greece at the age of 23, Callas had given fifty-six performances in seven operas and had appeared in around twenty recitals, a young career Callas would attribute as the foundation of her musical and dramatic upbringing.

Main operatic career

After returning to the United States and reuniting with her father, Callas made a round of auditions, including at the Metropolitan Opera. She was soon engaged to re-open the opera house in Chicago as Turandot, but the company folded before opening. The renowned basso Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, who also was to star in this opera, was aware that Tullio Serafin was looking for a dramatic soprano to cast as La Gioconda at the Arena di Verona. He would later recall the young Callas as being "amazing--so strong physically and spiritually; so certain of her future. I knew in a big outdoor theater like Verona's, this girl, with her courage and huge voice, would make a tremendous impact." Subsequently he recommended Callas to retired tenor and impresario Giovanni Zenatello. During her audition, Zenatello became so excited that he jumped up and joined Callas in the Act 4 duet. It was in this role that Callas made her Italian debut.

Upon her arrival in Verona, Callas met Giovanni Battista Meneghini, an older, wealthy industrialist, who began courting her. They married in 1949, and he assumed control of her career until 1959, when the marriage dissolved. Throughout the prime of her career, she went by the name Maria Meneghini Callas.

After La Gioconda, Callas had no further offers, and when Serafin, looking for someone to sing Tristan und Isolde, called on her, she told him that she already knew the score, even though she had looked at only the first act out of curiosity while at the conservatory. Sight-reading the opera's first two acts for him, Serafin praised her for knowing the role so well, whereupon she admitted that she had bluffed and had sight-read the music. Serafin immediately cast her in the role. Serafin thereafter served as Callas's mentor and supporter, recording and performing numerous pieces with her.

In 1949, Callas stepped in for an indisposed Margherita Carosio, learning and singing the role of Elvira in I Puritani in five days while still singing Brunnhilde in Die Walkure, impressing critics with her versatility (the role of Brunhilde requires a soprano voice, whereas the role of Elvira is a coloratura). Franco Zeffirelli likened the scale of Callas' achievement in Venice to asking Birgit Nilsson to substitute overnight for Beverly Sills.

Callas also learned and performed Cherubini's Medea and Rossini's Armida at very short notice. Callas displayed her vocal versatility in recitals that combined dramatic soprano arias alongside coloratura pieces, including in a 1952 RAI recital in which she opened with Lady Macbeth's "letter scene", followed by the "Mad Scene" from Lucia di Lammermoor, then by Abigaile's treacherous recitative and aria from Nabucco, finishing with the "Bell Song" from Lakme capped by a ringing high E in alt.

Callas made her official debut at La Scala in I Vespri Siciliani in December 1951, and this theater became her artistic home. La Scala mounted new productions by directors such as Herbert Von Karajan, Margherita Wallmann, Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli. Many of these productions—Lucia di Lammermoor, Medea, La Traviata, La Sonnambula, Il Turco in Italia, Anna Bolena, Norma, and Il Pirata—contributed to the reawakened interest in the bel canto repertoire.

Throughout the 1950s, Callas made numerous appearances at La Scala, the Opera Garnier, the Metropolitan Opera, the Dallas Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, Mexico's Palacio de las Bellas Artes, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

Weight loss

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Callas rehearsing for her I Vespri Siciliani at La Scala, 1951

In the early years of her career, Callas was a full-figured woman weighing 220 pounds (though she admitted to weighing "no more than 200 pounds" in an interview). Despite her zaftig figure, Meneghini and others considered her beautiful. During her initial performances in Cherubini's Medea in May 1953, Callas decided that she needed a leaner face and figure to do dramatic justice to this as well as the other roles she was undertaking:

"I was getting so heavy that even my vocalizing was getting heavy. I was tiring myself, I was perspiring too much, and I was really working too hard. And I wasn't really well, as in health; I couldn't move freely. And then I was tired of playing a game, for instance playing this beautiful young woman, and I was heavy and uncomfortable to move around. In any case, it was uncomfortable and I didn't like it. So I felt now if I'm going to do things right—I've studied all my life to put things right musically, so why don't I diet and put myself into a certain condition where I'm presentable."

During 1953 and early 1954, she lost almost 80 pounds. Various rumors spread regarding her weight loss method; one had her swallowing a tapeworm. An Italian pasta company claimed she lost weight by eating their product, prompting Callas to file a lawsuit. Callas stated that she lost the weight by eating a sensible low-calorie diet of mainly salads and chicken. Some believed that the loss of body mass made it more difficult for her to support her voice, triggering the vocal strain that became apparent later in the decade, while others believed the weight loss effected a newfound softness and femininity in her voice, as well as a greater confidence as a person and performer.

Critical response to voice

Callas's voice was and remains controversial; it bothered and disturbed as many people as it thrilled and enthralled. British classical record producer Walter Legge stated that Callas possessed that most essential ingredient for a great singer: an instantly recognizable voice. Conductor Nicola Rescigno was once asked if it was true that Callas had three voices; he replied, "No, she has three hundred voices!"

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Callas as Violetta in La Traviata, 1958

The nature of Callas's voice has been the subject of debate. Some have argued that, like Maria Malibran and Giuditta Pasta, she was a mezzo-soprano whose range was extended through training and willpower. Others have argued that she was a natural soprano. In 1957, Callas described her early voice this way: "The timbre was dark, almost black—when I think of it, I think of thick molasses", and in 1968 she added, "They say I was not a true soprano, I was rather toward a mezzo".

Vocal range

In her early years in Italy, Callas's voice was a dramatic soprano of prodigious power and range. In performance, her range was just short of three octaves, from F-sharp below middle C heard in "Arrigo! Ah parli ad un core" from I Vespri Siciliani to E-natural above high C, heard in the same opera as well as Rossini's Armida and Lakme's Bell Song. After her June 11, 1951 concert in Florence, Rock Ferris of Musical Courier said, "Her high E's and F's are taken full voice." In a French TV interview, Callas's teacher Elvira de Hidalgo spoke of her voice soaring to a high E, but did not mention the F. Although no definite recording of Callas singing high F's have surfaced, the presumed E-natural in her performance of Rossini's Armida—a poor-quality recording of uncertain pitch—is thought by some to have been a high F.

Vocal registers

Callas's voice was noted by Walter Legge and other experts for its three distinct registers. Her low or chest register could be extremely dark and almost baritone-like in power. She used this part of her voice for dramatic effect, often going into this register much higher on the scale than most sopranos. Her middle register had a peculiar and highly personal sound—"part oboe, part clarinet", as Claudia Cassidy described it—and was noted for its veiled or "bottled" sound, as if she were singing into a jug. Some listeners were reminded of a traditional Greek aulos. Walter Legge attributed this sound to the "extraordinary formation of her upper palate, shaped like a Gothic arch, not the Romanesque arch of the normal mouth". The upper register was ample and bright, with an impressive extension above high C, which she sang with the same full-throated sound as her lower registers (in contrast to the light flute-like sound of the typical coloratura soprano), and she was also able to perform diminuendo on these highest notes, as she demonstrated with the high E-flat in the finale of La Sonnambula.

The agility of Callas's voice allowed her to sing difficult ornate music with ease and technical polish. In the words of Walter Legge, even in the most difficult florid music, there were no musical or technical difficulties "which she could not execute with astonishing, unostentatious ease. Her chromatic runs, particularly downwards, were beautifully smooth and staccatos almost unfailingly accurate, even in the trickiest intervals. There is hardly a bar in the whole range of nineteenth century music for high soprano that seriously tested her powers." Callas's descending scales were described as "pearls falling off a string." She possessed a dependable trill in every vocal register, which she used as an expressive tool rather than mere ornament.

This combination of size, weight, range and agility was a source of amazement to her own contemporaries. One of the choristers present at her La Scala debut in I Vespri Siciliani recalled, "My God! She came on stage sounding like our deepest contralto, Cloe Elmo. And before the evening was over, she took a high E-flat. And it was twice as strong as Toti Dal Monte's!" For Italian lyric soprano Renata Tebaldi, "the most fantastic thing was the possibility for her to sing the soprano coloratura with this big voice! This was something really special. Fantastic absolutely!"

Artistry

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Callas as Bellini's Norma, 1956

Though adored by many opera enthusiasts, Callas was a controversial artist. Calling her La Divina, supporters praised her for her musicality as well as her dramatic prowess, while detractors deridingly described her as a "singing actress".

Maestro de Sabata told Walter Legge, "If the public could understand, as we do, how deeply and utterly musical Callas is, they would be stunned." One of her collegues described her as having "a sense of the rhythm within the rhythm".

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Callas as Medea on cover of live recording, Dallas, 1958

Of Callas's acting style, the verismo soprano Augusta Oltrabella said, "Despite what everyone says, [Callas] was an actress in the expression of the music, and not vice versa." At nearly 5'9", she was quite tall. In an interview, she spoke importance of economy in gestures, saying "The hand must not move, unless that movement is followed by the heart and soul". Critics wrote of Callas's expressive use of her hands and the intensity and stillness with which she listened to her colleagues and observed the action around her.

In interviews, Callas advised singers searching for appropriate movements or gestures to simply "listen" to the music with their "soul and ears"; the composer has already put everything one needs to know in the music itself.

Opera maestros have attested Callas's acting talents. Vocal coach Ira Siff remarked, "When I saw the final two Toscas she did in the old [Met], I felt like I was watching the actual story on which the opera had later been based." Maestro Carlo Maria Giulini spoke of his perception of Callas performances as being "reality" and his own world, by contrast, "artifice". Sir Rudolf Bing expressed similar sentiments:

"Once one heard and saw Maria Callas—one can’t really distinguish it—in a part, it was very hard to enjoy any other artist, no matter how great, afterwards, because she imbued every part she sang and acted with such incredible personality and life. One move of her hand was more than another artist could do in a whole act."

To Maestro Antonino Votto, Callas was

"The last great artist. When you think this woman was nearly blind, and often sang standing a good 150 feet from the podium. But her sensitivity! Even if she could not see, she sensed the music and always came in exactly with my downbeat. When we rehearsed, she was so precise, already note-perfect... She was not just a singer, but a complete artist. It's foolish to discuss her as a voice. She must be viewed totally—as a complex of music, drama, movement. There is no one like her today. She was an esthetic phenomenon."

Italian critic Eugenio Gara described Callas's performances thus:

"Her secret is in her ability to transfer to the musical plane the suffering of the character she plays, the nostalgic longing for lost happiness, the anxious fluctuation between hope and despair, between pride and supplication, between irony and generosity, which in the end dissolve into a superhuman inner pain. The most diverse and opposite of sentiments, cruel deceptions, ambitious desires, burning tenderness, grievous sacrifices, all the torments of the heart, acquire in her singing that mysterious truth, I would like to say, that psychological sonority, which is the primary attraction of opera."

Callas-Tebaldi controversy

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Maria Callas in the title role of Donizetti's opera Anna Bolena, La Scala, Milan (1957)

During the early 1950s, controversy arose regarding a supposed rivalry between Callas and Renata Tebaldi, an Italian lyrico spinto soprano. The contrast between Callas's often unconventional vocal qualities and Tebaldi's classically beautiful sound resurrected the conflict between the beauty of a voice versus its expressive use.

This "rivalry" reached a fever pitch in the mid-1950s, at times even engulfing the two ladies themselves, who were said by their more fanatical followers to have engaged in verbal barbs in each other's direction. Tebaldi was quoted as saying, "I have one thing that Callas doesn't have: a heart" while Callas was quoted as saying that comparing her with Tebaldi was like "comparing champagne with cognac", to which a bystander added, "No, with Coca Cola" (the latter comment being sometimes mistakenly attributed to Callas).

Tebaldi was trained by Carmen Melis, a noted verismo specialist, and she was rooted in the early twentieth century school of Italian singing just as firmly as Callas was rooted in nineteenth century bel canto. Callas was a dramatic soprano, whereas Tebaldi considered herself essentially a lyric. Callas and Tebaldi generally sang a different repertoire: in the early years of her career, Callas concentrated on the heavy dramatic soprano roles and later in her career on the bel canto repertoire, whereas Tebaldi concentrated on late Verdi and verismo roles, where her limited upper extention and her lack of a florid technique was not an issue. They shared a few roles, including Tosca in Puccini's opera and La Gioconda, which Tebaldi performed only late in her career.

The alleged rivalry aside, Callas made remarks appreciative of Tebaldi, and vice versa. During an interview with Norman Ross in Chicago, Callas said, "I admire Tebaldi's tone; it's beautiful—also some beautiful phrasing. Sometimes, I actually wish I had her voice." Francis Robinson of the Met wrote of an incident in which Tebaldi asked him to recommend a recording of La Gioconda in order to help her learn the role. Being fully aware of the "rivalry", he recommended Zinka Milanov's version. A few days later, he went to visit Tebaldi, only to find her sitting by the speakers, listening intently to Callas' recording. She then looked up at him and asked, "Why didn't you tell me Maria's was the best?"

Callas visited Tebaldi after a performance of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Met in the late 1960s, and the two fell into each other's arms, crying. In 1978, Tebaldi spoke warmly of her late colleague and summarized this rivalry in her imperfect English:

"This rivality was really building from the people of the newspapers and the fans. But I think it was very good for both of us, because the publicity was so big and it created a very big interest about me and Maria and was very good in the end. But I don’t know why they put this kind of rivality, because the voice was very different. She was really something unusual. And I remember that I was very young artist too, and I stayed near the radio every time that I know that there was something on radio by Maria."

Vocal decline

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Maria Callas, 1958

Some have said that the heavy roles undertaken in her early years damaged her voice. The mezzo-soprano Giulietta Simionato, Callas's close friend and frequent colleague, stated that she told Callas that she felt that the early heavy roles led to a weakness in the diaphragm and subsequent difficulty in controlling the upper register.

Louise Caselotti, who worked with Callas prior to her Italian debut, felt that it was not the heavy roles that hurt Callas's voice, but the lighter ones. Some have suggested that the heavy use of Callas's chest voice led to problems with the high notes. In his book, Callas's husband Meneghini wrote that Callas suffered an unusually early onset of menopause, which could have affected her voice. Soprano Carol Neblett once said, "A woman sings with her ovaries—you're only as good as your hormones."

Others argue that Callas's weight loss brought changes in Callas's body that made it progressively more difficult for her to support her heavy voice properly. There is no filmed footage of Callas during her heavy era, but photos from those years show a very upright posture with the shoulders relaxed and held back. All videos of Callas are from the period after her weight loss, and they show a progressively forward placement of the shoulders and a forward-slumping posture, which by the early 1960s had become very noticeable. Some (see below) have cited this as visual proof of a progressive loss of breath support.

Commercial and bootleg recordings of Callas from the late 1940s to 1953—the period during which she sang the heaviest dramatic soprano roles—show no decline in the fabric of the voice, no loss in volume and no unsteadiness or shrinkage in the upper register. To the contrary, there is an improvement in the beauty and steadiness of the voice during this time.

Recordings made in 1954 (immediately after her 80-pound weight loss) and later demonstrate a voice suddenly lighter and thinner in timbre, smaller in volume and with an increasing tendency towards stridency in the upper notes. The highest notes in the voice also did not have the same ease and freedom of 1953 or before. It is also at this time that unsteady top notes first begin to appear. These changes gradually worsened during the 1950s, but the slimming of her voice did not affect her scenic portrayals or, at least not until about 1960, degrade the overall quality of her singing.

At her performance of Norma in London in 1957 (her first performance at Covent Garden after the weight loss), critics would even claim her voice had changed for the better, that it had now supposedly become a more precise instrument, with a new focus. Many of her most critically acclaimed appearances are from the period 1954–1957 (Anna Bolena of 1957, Norma, La Traviata, Sonnambula and Lucia of 1955, to name a few). Even as late as 1959, she could still deliver vocally astounding performances.

Callas's close friend and colleague Tito Gobbi thought that her vocal problems all stemmed from her state of mind:

"I don’t think anything happened to her voice. I think she only lost confidence. She was at the top of a career that a human being could desire, and she felt enormous responsibility. She was obliged to give her best every night, and maybe she felt she wasn't [able] any more, and she lost confidence. I think this was the beginning of the end of this career."

In support of Gobbi's assertion, a bootleg recording of Callas rehearsing Beethoven's aria "Ah! Perfido" and parts of Verdi's La Forza del Destino shortly before her death shows her voice to be in much better shape than much of her 1960s recordings and far healthier than the 1970s concerts with Giuseppe di Stefano.

Callas herself contributed her problems to a loss of confidence brought about by a loss of breath support. Shortly before her death, Callas confided her own thoughts on her vocal problems to Peter Dragadze:

"I never lost my voice, but I lost strength in my diaphragm. ... Because of those organic complaints, I lost my courage and boldness. My vocal cords were and still are in excellent condition, but my 'sound boxes' have not been working well even though I have been to all the doctors. The result was that I overstrained my voice, and that caused it to wobble." (Gente, October 1, 1977)

Phyllis Curtin stated that videos of Callas in the late 1950s and early 1960s reveal a posture that betrays breath-support problems. Soprano Renee Fleming stated a similar opinion:

"I have a theory about what caused her vocal decline, but it's more from watching her sing than from listening. I really think it was her weight loss that was so dramatic and so quick. It's not the weight loss per se... But if one uses the weight for support, and then it's suddenly gone and one doesn't develop another musculature for support, it can be very hard on the voice. And you can't estimate the toll that emotional turmoil will take as well. I was told, by somebody who knew her well, that the way Callas held her arms to her solar plexus [allowed her] to push and create some kind of support. If she were a soubrette, it would never have been an issue. But she was singing the most difficult repertoire, the stuff that requires the most stamina, the most strength."

Dramatic soprano Deborah Voigt, who lost over 100 pounds after gastric bypass surgery, expressed similar thoughts concerning her own voice and body:

"Much of what I did with my weight was very natural, vocally. Now I've got a different body—there's not as much of me around. My diaphragm function, the way my throat feels, is not compromised in any way. But I do have to think about it more now. I have to remind myself to keep my ribs open. I have to remind myself, if my breath starts to stack. When I took a breath before, the weight would kick in and give it that extra Whhoomf! Now it doesn't do that. If I don’t remember to get rid of the old air and re-engage the muscles, the breath starts stacking, and that’s when you can't get your phrase, you crack high notes."

In an interview with Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge, Bonynge stated:

"But before she slimmed down, I mean this was such a colossal voice. It just poured out of her, the way Flagstad's did... Callas had a huge voice. When she and Stignani sang Norma, at the bottom of the range you could barely tell who was who... Oh it was colossal. And she took the big sound right up to the top."

Whether Callas' vocal decline was due to ill health, early menopause, over-use and abuse of her voice, loss of breath-support, loss of confidence, or weight loss will continue to be debated. Whatever the cause may have been, her singing career was effectively over by age 40, at an age when she should have been in her vocal prime.

Scandals and later career

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Callas on the cover of Time, October 1956, prior to her debut at the Met

The latter half of Callas's career was marked by a number of scandals. During performances of Madama Butterfly in Chicago, Callas was confronted by a process server who handed her papers about a lawsuit brought by Eddy Bagarozi, who claimed he was her agent. Callas was photographed with her mouth turned in a furious snarl. The photo was sent around the world and gave rise to the myth of Callas as a temperamental prima donna and a "Tigress".

In 1956, just before her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, Time ran a damaging cover story about Callas, with special attention paid to her difficult relationship with her mother and some unpleasant exchanges between the two.

In 1957, Callas was starring as Amina in La Sonnambula at the Edinburgh International Festival with the forces of La Scala. Her contract was for four performances, but due to the great success of the series, La Scala decided to put on a fifth performance. Callas told the La Scala officials that she was physically exhausted and that she had already committed to a previous engagement, a party thrown for her by her friend Elsa Maxwell in Venice. Despite this, La Scala announced a fifth performance, with Callas billed as Amina. Callas refused to stay and went on to Venice. Despite the fact that she had fulfilled her contract, she was accused of walking out on La Scala and the festival. The Scala officials did not defend Callas or inform the press that the additional performance was not approved by Callas. Renata Scotto took over the part, which was the start of her international career.

In January 1958, Callas was to open the Rome Opera House season with Norma, with Italy's president in attendance. Several days before the opening night, Callas alerted the management that she was not well and that they should have a standby ready. She was told "No one can double Callas". She decided to go ahead with the performance, but as bootleg recordings attest, she sounded ill and could barely get through the first act. Knowing she could not complete the performance, she cancelled after the first act. She was accused of walking out on the president of Italy in a fit of temperament, and pandemonium broke out. Press coverage aggravated the situation. A newsreel included file footage of Callas from 1955 sounding well, intimating the footage was of rehearsals for the Rome Norma, with the voiceover narration, "If you want to hear Callas, don't get all dressed up. Just go to a rehearsal; she usually stays to the end of those." The scandal became notorious as the "Rome Walkout". Callas brought a lawsuit against the Rome Opera House, and many years later, the Rome Opera was found to be at fault and Callas was cleared of all wrongdoing, but this was after her career was over.

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Franco Zeffirelli and Callas in the historic production of Tosca at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1964

Callas' relationship with La Scala had also started to become strained after the Edinburgh incident, and this effectively severed her major ties with her artistic home. Later in 1958, Callas and Rudolf Bing were in discussion about her season at the Met. She was scheduled to perform in Verdi's La Traviata and in Macbeth, two very different operas which almost require totally different singers. Callas and the Met could not reach an agreement, and before the opening of Medea in Dallas, Bing sent a telegram to Callas terminating her contract. Headlines of "Bing Fires Callas" appeared in newspapers around the world. Despite this, Callas proceeded to give two performances of Medea. Bing would later say that Callas was the most difficult artist he ever worked with, "because she was so much more intelligent. Other artists, you could get around. But Callas you could not get around. She knew exactly what she wanted, and why she wanted it." Despite this, Bing's admiration for Callas never wavered, and in September of 1959, he sneaked into La Scala in order to listen to Callas record La Gioconda for EMI. Callas and Bing reconciled in the mid 1960s, and Callas returned to the Met for two performances of Tosca with her friend Tito Gobbi.

In her final years as a singer, she sang in Medea, Norma, and Tosca, most notably her Paris, New York, and London Toscas of January–February 1964 (wherein, at one of the performances, she reportedly received 27 curtain calls taking over 40 minutes) and her last performance on stage, on July 5, 1965, at Covent Garden. A television film of Act 2 of the Covent Garden Tosca of 1964 was broadcast in Britain on February 9, 1964, giving a rare view of Callas in performance and, specifically, of her on-stage collaboration with Tito Gobbi.

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Maria Callas and Giuseppe Di Stefano on one of their last tours together in Japan in 1974

In 1969, the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini cast Callas in her only non-operatic acting role, as the Greek mythological character of Medea, in his film by that name. The production was grueling, and Callas is said to have fainted after a day of strenuous running back and forth on a mudflat in the sun. The film was not a commercial success, but as Callas's only film appearance, it documents her stage presence.

From October 1971 to March 1972, Callas gave a series of master classes at the Juilliard School in New York. These classes later formed the basis of Terrence McNally's 1995 play Master Class.

In 1972, George Moore, president of the Metropolitan Opera board of directors, is said to have offered her the job of Artistic Director. She allegedly turned this down to stage a series of joint recitals in Europe in 1973 and in the U.S., South Korea, and Japan in 1974 with the tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano. Critically, this was a musical disaster owing to both performers' worn-out voices. However, the tour was an enormous popular success. Audiences thronged to hear the two performers, who had so often appeared together in their prime. Her final public performance was on November 11, 1974, in Sapporo, Japan.

Final years

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Callas leaving an Olympic Airways aircraft in Athens

In 1957, while still married to husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini, Callas was introduced to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis at a party given in her honour by Elsa Maxwell after a performance in Donizetti's Anna Bolena. The affair that followed received much publicity in the popular press, and in November 1959, Callas left her husband. According to one of her biographers, Callas and Onassis had a child, a boy, who died hours after he was born on March 30, 1960. In his book about his wife, Meneghini, states categorically that Maria Callas was unable to bear children. As well, various sources dismiss Gage's claim, as they note that the birth certificates Gage used to prove of this "secret child" were issued in 1998, twenty-one years after Callas's death. Still other sources claim that Callas had at least one abortion while involved with Onassis. The relationship ended nine years later, when Onassis dropped Callas in favour of Jacqueline Kennedy.

Callas spent her last years living largely in isolation in Paris and died on September 16, 1977, of a heart attack, at the age of 53. A funerary liturgy was held at Agios Stephanos (St. Stephen's) Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Rue Georges-Bizet, Paris, on September 20, 1977, and her ashes were interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. After being stolen and later recovered, they were scattered over the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Greece, according to her wish.

Post-mortem facts

In late 2004, opera and film director Franco Zeffirelli made what many consider a bizarre claim that Callas may have been murdered by her confidant--Greek pianist Vasso Devetzi--in order to gain control of Callas' US $9,000,000 estate. A more likely explanation is that Callas' death was due to heart failure brought on by (possibly unintentional) overuse of Mandrax (methaqualone), a sleeping aid.

According to biographer Stelios Galatopoulos, Devetzi insinuated herself into Callas' trust and acted virtually as her agent. This claim is corroborated by Iakintha (Jackie) Callas in her book Sisters, where she asserts that Devetzi conned Maria out of control of half of her estate, while promising to establish the Maria Callas Foundation to provide scholarships for young singers. After hundreds of thousands of dollars had allegedly vanished, Devetzi finally did establish the foundation.

In 2002, Zeffirelli produced and directed a film in Callas' memory. Callas Forever was a highly fictionalized motion picture in which Callas was played by Fanny Ardant. It depicted the last months of Callas' life, when she was seduced into the making of a movie of Carmen, lip-synching to her 1964 recording of that opera.

Callas as they saw her

Many singers, musicians, and directors have discussed Callas and her art. Select quotations can be viewed on Wikiquote.

Notable recordings

All recordings are in mono unless otherwise indicated. Live performances are typically available on multiple labels: see the complete discography and list of currently available recordings for further information.

• Verdi, Nabucco, conducted by Vittorio Gui, live performance, Napoli, 1949
• Verdi, Il trovatore, conducted by Guido Picco, live performance, Mexico City, June 20 1950
• Verdi, Aida, conducted by Oliviero de Fabritiis, live performance, Mexico City, July 3 1951
• Bellini, Norma, conducted by Vittorio Gui, live performance, Covent Garden, London, November 18 1952
• Verdi, Macbeth, conducted by Victor de Sabata, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7 1952
• Bellini, I puritani, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, March-April 1953
• Mascagni, Cavalleria Rusticana, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, August 1953
• Puccini, Tosca, conducted by Victor de Sabata, studio recording for EMI, August 1953. Many, critics and listeners, find this the greatest recording of Tosca ever.
• Cherubini, Medea, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 10 1953
• Leoncavallo, Pagliacci, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, June 1954
• Spontini, La vestale, conducted by Antonino Votto, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7, 1954
• Verdi, La traviata, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, live performance, La Scala, Milan, May 28 1955
• Verdi, Rigoletto, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, September 1955
• Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, live performance, Berlin, September 29 1955
• Bellini, Norma, conducted by Antonino Votto, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7 1955. Described by many as Callas's finest recorded-performance of her career.
• Verdi, Il trovatore, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, studio recording for EMI, August 1956
• Puccini, La boheme, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI, August-September 1956. Like her later recording of Carmen, this was her only performance of the complete opera, as she never appeared onstage in it.
• Verdi, Un ballo in maschera, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI, September 1956
• Rossini, Barber of Seville, conducted by Alceo Galliera, studio recording for EMI in stereo, February 1957
• Bellini, La sonnambula, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI, March 1957
• Donizetti, Anna Bolena, conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, live performance, La Scala, Milan, April 14 1957
• Bellini, La sonnambula, conducted by Antonino Votto, live performance, Cologne, July 4 1957
• Verdi, Un ballo in maschera, conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7 1957
• Verdi, La traviata, conducted by Franco Ghione, live performance, Lisbon, March 27 1958
• Mad Scenes (excerpts from Anna Bolena, Bellini's Il pirata and Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet), conducted by Nicola Rescigno, studio recording for EMI in stereo, September 1958
• Ponchielli, La Gioconda, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI in stereo, September 1959
• Puccini, Tosca, conducted by Carlo Felice Cillario, live performance, London, January 1964
• Bizet, Carmen, conducted by Georges Prêtre, studio recording for EMI in stereo, 1964. It is her only performance of the role, and her only performance of the complete opera; she never appeared in it onstage. The recording used the recitatives added after Bizet's death. Callas' performance caused critic Harold C. Schonberg to speculate in his book "The Glorious Ones" that Callas perhaps should have sung mezzo roles instead of simply soprano ones.
• Puccini, Tosca, conducted by Georges Prêtre, studio recording for EMI in stereo, December 1964. Although this is a brilliant recording, especially in dramatic sense, it is surely overshadowed by Callas' earlier, 1953 version.

Quotes

• On hearing a recording of Tebaldi's: "What a lovely voice, but who cares?"
• "First I lost my voice, then I lost my figure and then I lost Onassis,"
• "Don't talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I make the goddamn rules."
• "I would not kill my enemies, but I will make them get down on their knees. I will, I can, I must."
• "You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there."
• "Some say I have a beautiful voice, some say I have not. It is a matter of opinion. All I can say, those who don't like it shouldn't come to hear me."
• "My poor sight gives me an advantage. I can't see the people in the audience who are scratching their heads while I am lost in my role and giving everything I have to the drama."
• "If I have stepped on some people at times because I am at the top, it couldn't be helped. What should I do if someone gets hurt... retire?"
• "If we do 10 Macbeths, we have 10 tenors, 10 baritones. No, I'm sorry, I can't do that, that is not art!" (In Regards to Mr. Bing's uncreative choices at the Met after he sent her the ultimatum telegram.)
• "When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping."

Bibliography

• Ardoin, John, The Callas Legacy, Old Tappen, New Jersey: Scribner and Sons, 1991, ISBN 0-684-19306-X
• Galatopoulos, Stelios, Maria Callas, Sacred Monster, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998, ISBN 0-684-85985-8
• Scott, Michael, Maria Meneghini Callas, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992, ISBN 1555531466
• Seletsky, Robert E., "The Performance Practice of Maria Callas: Interpretation and Instinct," The Opera Quarterly, 20/4 (2004), p. 587-602.
• Seletsky, Robert E., "Callas at EMI: Remastering and Perception"; "A Callas Recording Update"; "A Callas Recording Update...updated," The Opera Quarterly, 16/2 (2000), p. 240-255; 21/2 (2005), p. 387-391; 21/3, p. 545-546 (2005). (also available at www.Divinarecords.com)
• Stancioff, Nadia, Maria Callas Remembered: An Intimate Portrait of the Private Callas, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1987, ISBN 0-525-24565-0
• Stassinopoulos, Arianna, Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981, ISBN 0-671-25583-5

External links

• Divina Callas' official website
• Complete International Maria Callas Bibliography Around 750 publications listed.
• Divina Records Dedicated to providing the best and most accurate live recordings of Callas, as well as scholarly articles regarding Callas recordings
• Serendipity: Maria Callas Callas on the Serendipity website
• Callas Forever at IMDb
• OperaCast Blog discussion of Callas' recordings
• Re-Visioning Callas Recommended recordings for Callas newcomers
• Callas as Medea Callas in Pasolini's film of Medea
• Μαρία Κάλλας Maria Callas narrative biography (in Greek)
• Find A Grave Maria Callas' gravesite in Paris
• ZEFFIRELLI: 'CALLAS WAS MURDERED' Article reference
• YouTube - Maria Callas - O Mio Babbino Caro Maria Callas sings Giacomo Puccini's "O Mio Babbino Caro"