Maria Callas, La Divina

The soprano you hear singing La mamma morta in Philadelphia is Maria Callas, one of the most important names in opera. In this post, I'd like to talk briefly about this great artist. First of all, let's hear the aria without Tom Hanks:

She was born in 1923 in New York of Greek parents, and died of a heart attack, alone in Paris in 1977, aged 53. In the 1950s, she dominated the opera world like no other artist. Her retirement from the stage due to vocal crisis, her comebacks, and her affair with Aristotle Onassis in the 1960s, made her a headline name. And the final concerts in 1973/1974 broke hearts and set legends. She remains, over thirty years after her death, the biggest selling female opera singer of them all. She is La Divina, The Goddess.

Her voice is rich like a red wine. It is full of tone and character. It is not always beautiful, and here we come to one of opera's key arguments: do you prefer a pure, beautiful voice? Or are you willing to forsake such beauty for character and roughness? Her great rival was Renata Tebaldi, an Italian soprano with a more beautiful voice, but lacking the colours and dramatic insight that Callas was able to give.

She sang Wagner and heavy dramatic roles early in her career which may have started to damage her voice. A meeting with the Italian conductor Tullio Serafin changed everything as he encouraged her to explore the bel canto repertory of composers Bellini and Donizetti, who were writing in the early 19th century. (A similar narrative and change in direction would happen a decade later with Richard Bonynge and Joan Sutherland.)


Bel canto literally means beautiful singing. It requires a formidable technique to sing long phrases, high notes, trills and ornaments (or embellishments of the vocal line). The emphasis was very much on opera as song, over opera as drama. Two bel canto title roles became synonymous with Callas: as Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and as Bellini's Norma. In this repertory, which had so long been the province of "canary fanciers" who piped through the tunes, Callas found new drama and insight in the notes and, working with directors Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli, resurrected the bel canto repertory. That Norma and Lucia are still in the repertory today is largely due to Maria Callas and her work in the 1950s.


Here is Lina Pagliughi singing the "Mad Scene" from Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). Killing her husband on her wedding night sends Lucia into madness. Pagliughi comes from the generation before Callas:

and now, here is Callas herself:

Which version do you prefer? To take the final note as an example, while Pagliughi takes the high note with a bright quality, Callas turn it more into a horrified, piercing shriek. It's an uglier sound perhaps, but is it less thrilling or exciting? Is it more in keeping with the shattered nerves of the character?


Here, Callas sings Casta diva from Bellini's Norma (1831). This is in 1958, by which point the voice was already in decline.

The challenging roles of her young career played a part in this. No doubt the stress of being Maria Callas played its part too. She was chubbier too when younger before quickly losing 80 pounds in weight and becoming the beautiful svelte figure so familiar to us.


And with that change, she became an even more attractive and credible figure on stage. As well as the voice, Callas was known for being able to act with the body as well, so much so that she starred in Pasolini's film Medea in 1969. Her ability to make an audience believe in her character, her approach to the performance on stage was what made her so unique at the time, and remains as her lasting legacy: a complete performance of a character, in body and in voice.


Sadly, there are few video recordings of stage performances left to us. However, she was persuaded to return to Covent Garden in 1964 for a handful of performance of Tosca opposite her friend Tito Gobbi singing Scarpia and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. The second act was filmed and can be seen here:

Like Callas, Gobbi had a voice that was not especially beautiful, but full of character and colour. Through the 1950s Callas made a series of recordings with the La Scala opera orchestra and chorus, mostly with Gobbi as the baritone and Giuseppe di Stefano being the resident tenor. Her old mentor, Tullio Serafin conducted several of them. They have not been out of the catalogue for 50 years, and the 1953 recording of Tosca, with Victor de Sabata conducting, is recognised as one of the greatest opera recordings of all time.


Here are Gobbi and Callas, singing father and daughter in an excerpt from their recording of Verdi's Rigoletto (1851). Abducted and raped, Gilda tells her father (Rigoletto) of her ordeal, and Callas almost drains her voice of colour to tell her story:

Then Rigoletto rails against the world, but hear how Gobbi softens his voice as he talks to and comforts his daughter at 4.14. Piangi, he says, weep my child. The scene ends (at 8.19) with Rigoletto plotting his revenge for his daughter. Now both singers change colour again: Callas is forceful, Gobbi is savage.

Norma, Lucia, Tosca. There is one other role associated with Callas: Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata (1853). A studio recording was made early in her career, but like most things Callas, as her legend grew, bootleg recordings of stage performance circulated. There is even a play about the hunting of a recording of her 1959 performances in Lisbon. In 1955, she opened the season at the La Scala opera house, Milan, in a new production by Luchino Visconti. The performance was recorded and although the sound is quite poor, it remains an important document of her artistry in one of her most important roles. Giuseppe di Stefano sings Alfredo:

In 1959, she left her husband of 10 years and became a media celebrity as the mistress of Aristotle Onassis. It was said that, by this time, she had had enough of being a star and wanted to find life again as a woman. Onassis, it seems, broke her heart when he left her in 1968 for Jackie Kennedy and Callas retired to Paris where she became a reclusive figure. However, in 1971/72 she gave a series of masterclasses for young singers at the Julliard school (many of which can be heard on youtube) and in 1973/74 took part in a tour with her old friend Giuseppe di Stefano. Although critically a disaster, these tours were hugely popular. There are still insights to the music, but the whole event seems tinged with sadness. Callas's version of O mio babbino caro in 1973 is painful to listen to, not because it is badly sung, but because it reminds one of what once was, and what is now lost:

After her death, she was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Her ashes were stolen; when recovered, they were scattered into the Aegean sea.


There are but a handful of opera singers known beyond the opera world: Pavarotti, certainly; Caruso, probably. But for many, there is only one diva, one soprano, one opera singer, and that is Maria Callas.



You can read much more about Callas on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Callas

Here is one of the many Julliard masterclasses, which can be quite technical but may be of interest. This is of Casta diva: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d30L2QfUYY

There are a number of documentaries about Callas. Here is one (in chunks): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoQ4uKSTDD8 Another one (in chunks): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQwnj9NEZ8I

Callas in conversation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MApX-iqCszs and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENJh8JpmP0Q