The drama Callas brought to her stage performances was uncannily reflected in the traumas of her personal life.
At the peak of her career in the 1950s, Maria Callas was among the world’s most famous opera singers. At a time when few of the finest opera singers also valued acting ability, Callas was hailed as the most enthralling singer-actress in memory.
Maria Callas was born to Greek immigrant parents in New York City in 1923. She returned to Greece at the age of 13, and was taken under the wing of Elvira de Hidalgo, an inspirational singing teacher. The teenage Callas was a particularly awkward-looking adolescent—tall, overweight, and extremely nearsighted—but she studied tenaciously and made a number of professional appearances in Greece during the World War II German occupation.
In 1945, Callas returned to New York, but her singing career did not blossom until she appeared at the Verona Arena in 1947 and then elsewhere in Italy. In 1951, Callas made her debut at Milan’s La Scala in Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani. Her many subsequent triumphs at that venue led to a clamour for her presence at opera houses around the world. She created a sensation with her portrayals of such tragic heroines as Puccini’s Tosca and Verdi’s Violeta in La Traviata. But it was her emotionally charged performance in the title role of Bellini’s Norma that perhaps best displayed her prowess as opera’s most accomplished tragedienne.
As her career blossomed, Callas’s off-stage life had to be lived more and more in the public gaze. In 1954, she shed 70 pounds, enabling her to rival Hollywood’s glamorous stars. But she also acquired a reputation for tempestuousness. Her feuds and displays of bad temper made for lurid newspaper reports, as did her stormy relationship with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, which began in 1959.
In 1968, Onassis abandoned Callas for the widowed Jacqueline Kennedy. Callas had not sung on stage for several years by that time, and a final brief concert tour in 1973–74 was inevitably a great disappointment. Her remarkable voice—hugely powerful yet paradoxically fragile—had been overworked from an early age and strained by the demands of so many arduous roles.
The drama Callas brought to her stage performances was uncannily reflected in the traumas of her personal life.
Callas was not without her critics. Her dramatic brilliance was universally recognised, but her soprano voice was far from perfect. It was often unsteady, veering off into shrillness at the upper end of her range, and there could be dramatic breaks as she descended to the lower end. But these faults were offset by her flawless technique, and by the emotional depth that she conveyed through her roles.
Callas died at age 53 in 1977, the great years far behind. She is widely acclaimed as an outstanding interpreter of operatic music in the 20th century.
Edward Horton
SEE ALSO:
CARUSO, ENRICO; OPERA; OPERETTA.
FURTHER READING
Kesting, Jürgen, trans. John Hunt. Maria Callas (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1993);
Linakis, Steven. Diva: The Life and Death of Maria Callas (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Bellini: Norma; Live in Concert 1935–59; Lyric and Coloratura Arias.