Maria Callas

Opera Singer

  • Born: December 2, 1923
  • Birthplace: New York, New York
  • Died: September 16, 1977
  • Place of death: Paris, France

American-born Greek opera singer

A dramatic soprano of wide range and flexibility, Callas not only gave definitive interpretations to standard operas but revived long-neglected bel canto period pieces. With her commanding stage presence and variety of vocal colors, she made operatic acting as important as singing. Her glamour, flamboyant personality, and tempestuous private life gave her stature in fashion, popular culture, and tabloid journalism, as well as in the arts, bringing classical music to the attention of new audiences.

Area of achievement Music

Early Life

Maria Callas (KAHL-las) was born Maria Cecilia Sophia Anna Kalogeropoulos in the United States of parents who had recently immigrated from Greece. Family life was troubled, and Maria always claimed her mother favored her older sister, Jackie, who was considered more talented and beautiful. As she moved into adolescence, Maria had acne and was overweight and awkward. She did show early aptitude for music and may have appeared as a child on American amateur radio programs.

Life in the United States proved disappointing for the Callas family, and in 1937, Callas’s mother returned to Athens with her two daughters, leaving her husband, now a Manhattan pharmacist, behind. Lying about her age, Callas was able to begin studies at the National Conservatory in Athens at age sixteen, becoming the student of Elvira de Hildalgo, a distinguished singer in her own right and highly regarded as a teacher. Though later critics were to pronounce Callas a dramatic soprano or even a possible contralto, with Hildalgo she learned coloratura techniques. During the early 1940’s, Callas sang widely in Greece, earning a considerable reputation and possibly benefiting from the favor of the Germans who occupied the country for a time and were pleased with a young woman singing Wagner and Beethoven. Callas family members claimed they survived economically through the generosity of sister Jackie’s wealthy suitor, a member of the Embiricos shipping family.

In 1944, Callas returned to the United States and was reunited with her father. Though she auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and sang briefly in Chicago, she found it difficult to continue her career in the United States. Almost ready to give up, she was engaged to sing in Italy’s Verona Opera Festival during the 1947 season. Although severely overweight, without a sense of style, her voice was rich, expressive, and flexible; on stage, audiences were ready to overlook her appearance. After only a few days in Verona, she met Giovanni Battista Meneghini, wealthy from his family’s construction business but obsessed with opera and opera singers. A short, squat man, he was almost three decades her senior, yet she responded to his courtship, along with his readiness to devote himself to advancing her career. As her business manager, he was later to antagonize opera managers, who considered him greedy and difficult, and he would finally be rejected by Callas. It seems evident, however, that Meneghini’s confidence and direction transformed Callas into a world-class singer.

Life’s Work

Under Meneghini’s management Callas advanced from strong singer to stronger singer. She sang in Italy’s great opera houses, and also in South America. She sang the operas of the major composers, from heavy Wagnerian roles to coloratura classics. She gave new dramatic fire to Giacomo Puccini’s relatively neglected opera Turandot. Among her favorites were Lucia di Lammermoor, I Puritani, and two operas that were to be especially identified with her, Luigi Cherubini’s Medea and Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma. During the early 1950’s her greatest triumphs occurred at Milan’s famed opera house, La Scala, where she reigned for seven years, despite the rivalry of Italy’s most beloved prima donna, Renata Tebaldi. The partisans of each performer were passionate in support of their favorite singer, and they frequently interrupted performances with loud applause or jeers.

A series of complete opera recordings made at La Scala in 1952, conducted by Tullio Serafin and Victor de Sabata, would become collectors’ classics. Recordings obscured Callas’s obesity, a frequent subject of snide and cruel remarks. For example, when she sang Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, some observers joked that they could not distinguish her legs from those of the elephants.

By 1952, Callas had had enough. In her last performance of the Scala season she appeared on stage a transformed woman, having lost more than 62 pounds. Suddenly, as her flashing eyes and noble Greek features emerged, she actually resembled the handsome heroines she portrayed. Almost overnight she became a fashion icon, and her portrait graced magazine covers everywhere. Though some critics suggested the weight loss had removed a luster from the voice, its dramatic intensity still thrilled. When Callas returned to the United States in 1954, to sing in Chicago, it was as a prima donna and international beauty.

Her celebrity could no longer be ignored, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York finally met her now-extravagant demands. She was a success at the leading opera house in the United States. However, conflicts with Metropolitan Opera manager Rudolf Bing soon ended her tenure, and she returned to Europe where she felt more comfortable. By now quarrels with opera general directors (at the Metropolitan and at La Scala) were frequent and highly publicized. In 1957 she further angered a Rome audience by withdrawing after the first act of a performance of Norma attended by the president of Italy. Although she pleaded illness, her departure was widely interpreted as an insult to the Italian state.

Perhaps Callas was beginning to acknowledge some of the vocal flaws that critics found intensifying: the harshness, the unsteady high notes, the metallic edge. Perhaps she was simply tired of performing. At any rate, another ambition seized her: to be a grand lady of café society. After society host Elsa Maxwell introduced her to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, her interest in singing noticeably declined. Dispensing with the professional and personal services of Meneghini, by 1959 she had cast her lot with Onassis.

Most Callas biographers agree that Onassis was the love of her life and that she expected to marry him. With this in mind, she renounced her U.S. citizenship in 1966 to become a Greek citizen. At this time divorce was not possible in Italy, where she had married, but as a Greek citizen she could be legally free to remarry. When Onassis abruptly married Jacqueline Kennedy (formerly married to U.S. president John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963) two years later, Callas’s friends affirmed that she was emotionally devastated, yet her public statements were philosophical. Although her association with Onassis was, according to intimates, renewed after his disillusionment with his new wife, it was never the same again. The Onassis-Kennedy-Callas triangle was a serial melodrama running in the tabloid presses of two continents.

In the remaining decade of her life, Callas appeared in the 1969 film Medea, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, though her emoting, so effective on the operatic stage, proved too broad for the cinema. In the early 1970’s she gave a series of master classes at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. By 1973 she had agreed to an international recital tour with an old colleague, friend, and possible lover, Giuseppe di Stefano. They performed to sold-out houses. However, too many vocal and emotional problems surfaced for both during the tour, bookings were frequently canceled, and a concert in Sapporo, Japan, turned out to be their last.

During the final three years of her life, Callas became a virtual recluse in her Parisian apartment, watching television, playing cards with her domestic help, and listening to her old recordings. She died quietly in Paris at the age of fifty-three. Her funeral, in the Greek Orthodox Church on Rue Georges Bizet in Paris, took on the character of a state funeral, attended by many friends, celebrities, and supporters.

Significance

Callas was the most famous classical singer of her period and a major figure in the history of opera. She turned vocal flaws into strengths, proving that effective opera was not simply a matter of making beautiful sounds. Her refusal to be categorized or limited in repertory extended the possibilities for the next generation of female opera singers. Her substantial recorded legacy will provide future listeners with at least some understanding of her artistry.

Bibliography

Ardoin, John. Callas at Juilliard: The Master Classes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. A transcription of Callas’s famous master classes, even more valued by musicologists than students, providing a record of her wit and wisdom after fifteen years of opera performance.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Callas Legacy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977. A generously annotated discography, covering commercial recordings, taped performances, and even pirated records. Ardoin’s analyses clearly elucidate the strengths and limitations of Callas’s art.

Edwards, Anne. Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001. A lengthy, readable survey of Callas’s life and career, by a well-known celebrity biographer. Since the book presents no new facts, it will be of interest to the general reader more than the Callas enthusiast.

Huffington, Arianna. Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. A highly readable portrait, stressing Callas’s personality rather than the artist. Huffington’s work is always controversial, and some of her reported facts have been challenged.

Levine, Robert. Maria Callas: A Musical Biography. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2003. A well-illustrated review of Callas’s life and artistry, with a glossary of helpful musical terms, a chronology, a performance history, and two CD recordings.

Lowe, David A., ed. Callas as They Saw Her. New York: Ungar, 1986. Recollections by those who either knew Callas, performed with her, or heard her sing. Excerpts from her own interviews are included.

Meneghini, Giovanni Battista. My Wife, Maria Callas. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982. Though the mother, sister, cousin, and many friends of Callas have written books, this is the most moving and revealing of the singer. Meneghini, as husband and manager, participated in Callas’s greatest triumphs.

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