Interesting and informative article on Maria Callas who passed too early, but was the most remarkable soprano diva of the era, excerpted in part below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/arts/music/maria-callas-centennial.html
Her voice is the shadow that remains after shock, after anger: the sound of a woman realizing she has nothing left to live for.
It is the second act of Verdi’s opera “La Traviata.” Violetta and Alfredo, a prostitute and a wealthy young man, have fallen madly in love. But his father confronts her, demanding she drop the disreputable affair to salvage the marriage prospects of Alfredo’s sister.
For Violetta, it is an unbearable sacrifice, but she’ll do it. “Dite alla giovine,” she sings, in a broken murmur: Tell your daughter that I will abandon the one good thing I have, for her sake.
Singing that passage on May 28, 1955, at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the soprano Maria Callas reached the phrase about how “bella e pura” Alfredo’s sister is — how beautiful and pure — and inserted the tiniest breath before “pura.” It’s a barely noticeable silence, but within it is a black hole of resignation. Callas’s split-second pause achingly suggests Violetta knows that if she, too, were pure, her happiness would not be expendable.
Tiny details like this are how Callas — who would have turned 100 on Dec. 2 — gave opera’s over-the-top melodramas a startling sense of reality, and her characters the psychological depth and nuance of actual people. Tiny details like this, captured on hundreds of recordings, are how this most mythical of singers has stubbornly resisted drifting entirely into myth.
The defining diva of the 20th century, Callas is not so far from us in some ways; a normal life span would have brought her well into the 21st. Those many recordings — endlessly remastered, repackaged and rereleased — have kept her in our ears, the benchmark of what is possible in opera, musically and emotionally. Her dramatic art and dramatic life, often intertwined, have made her an enduring cultural touchstone: a coolly glamorous stare in Apple ads and the inspiration for plays (including a Tony Award winner), performances by Marina Abramovic (bad) and Monica Bellucci (worse), a coming film starring Angelina Jolie (we’ll see), even a hologram tour (sigh).
Yet Callas can also seem like a figure of faraway history. Her lonely death was back in 1977, when she was just 53 — and by then, her days of true performing glory were almost 20 years behind her. The number of people who saw her live, particularly in staged opera, is dwindling, and her short career was just early enough that precious little of it was filmed.
So she has been for decades, for most of us, a creation of still images and audio. We have to use those tools to conjure what her performances were like, to complete them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/arts/music/maria-callas-centennial.html
Her voice is the shadow that remains after shock, after anger: the sound of a woman realizing she has nothing left to live for.
It is the second act of Verdi’s opera “La Traviata.” Violetta and Alfredo, a prostitute and a wealthy young man, have fallen madly in love. But his father confronts her, demanding she drop the disreputable affair to salvage the marriage prospects of Alfredo’s sister.
For Violetta, it is an unbearable sacrifice, but she’ll do it. “Dite alla giovine,” she sings, in a broken murmur: Tell your daughter that I will abandon the one good thing I have, for her sake.
Singing that passage on May 28, 1955, at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the soprano Maria Callas reached the phrase about how “bella e pura” Alfredo’s sister is — how beautiful and pure — and inserted the tiniest breath before “pura.” It’s a barely noticeable silence, but within it is a black hole of resignation. Callas’s split-second pause achingly suggests Violetta knows that if she, too, were pure, her happiness would not be expendable.
Tiny details like this are how Callas — who would have turned 100 on Dec. 2 — gave opera’s over-the-top melodramas a startling sense of reality, and her characters the psychological depth and nuance of actual people. Tiny details like this, captured on hundreds of recordings, are how this most mythical of singers has stubbornly resisted drifting entirely into myth.
The defining diva of the 20th century, Callas is not so far from us in some ways; a normal life span would have brought her well into the 21st. Those many recordings — endlessly remastered, repackaged and rereleased — have kept her in our ears, the benchmark of what is possible in opera, musically and emotionally. Her dramatic art and dramatic life, often intertwined, have made her an enduring cultural touchstone: a coolly glamorous stare in Apple ads and the inspiration for plays (including a Tony Award winner), performances by Marina Abramovic (bad) and Monica Bellucci (worse), a coming film starring Angelina Jolie (we’ll see), even a hologram tour (sigh).
Yet Callas can also seem like a figure of faraway history. Her lonely death was back in 1977, when she was just 53 — and by then, her days of true performing glory were almost 20 years behind her. The number of people who saw her live, particularly in staged opera, is dwindling, and her short career was just early enough that precious little of it was filmed.
So she has been for decades, for most of us, a creation of still images and audio. We have to use those tools to conjure what her performances were like, to complete them.
I think Maria Callas is still one of the top selling classical artists, she was unique. Perhaps not a 'beautiful' voice like Lucia Popp or Renee Fleming, but so much character and expression. Interesting that she didn't sing much Mozart.
A very sad life, too, especially after she fell in with Onassis.
Geoff
A very sad life, too, especially after she fell in with Onassis.
Geoff
Wonderful article (in italian) about Maria Callas and her beautiful friendship and desperate love for the italian director/poet/writer Pier Paolo Pasolini that she met after breaking up with Onassis. They were real soul mate but Pasolini was in love with an actor, a very sad story.
https://artemagazine.it/2023/11/28/pier-paolo-pasolini-e-maria-callas-cronaca-di-un-amore/
https://artemagazine.it/2023/11/28/pier-paolo-pasolini-e-maria-callas-cronaca-di-un-amore/
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