Callas. One of the greatest and most versatile operatic
singers in recent history. She sang an incredible variety of
rôles (see list below); from Wagnerian to
light coloratura; from high soprano to mezzo. But it is not just
the range of rôles she was capable of singing, but how she sang
them that makes her special. Maria Callas had a distinctive vocal
timbre which she could colour in a seemingly infinite number of
manners. She could also act, a rarity with opera singers still
today. She was a joy to listen to and watch. True her voice was
flawed, but her artistry was unmatched.
Her voice was "not all molded from the same metallo,
as they would say in Italy; and this fundamental variety of tone
produced by a single voice affords one of the richest veins of
musical expression which the artistry of a great cantatrice
is able to exploit...
...the history of the art [of singing] might tend to suggest that
it is not the perfectly pure, silvery voice,
impeccably accurate in tone throughout every note of its compass,
which lends itself to the greatest achievements of impassioned
singing. No voice whose timbre is completely incapable of
variation can ever produce that kind of opaque, or as it were,
suffocated tone, which is at once so moving and so natural in the
portrayal of certain instants of violent emotion or passionate
anguish." - Stendahl writing about Giuditta Pasta
(quoted from The Callas Legacy by John Ardoin).
Maria Meneghini Callas was born Sophie Cecelia
Kalogeropoulou (Kalos) (or Maria Anna Cecilia Sophia
Kalogeropoulos) on 2 December, 1923 in New York. She left the
United States in 1937 to move to Greece. Here she studied at the
Athens Conservatory. She made her professional operatic debut in
a major role, Tosca, at the Athens Opera in 1941 (See list
of other debuts below). She married Giovanni Battista Meneghini in
1949, and he guided her career until their separation in 1959.
She went on to triumphant performances at all of the major opera
houses. Her last operatic appearance was in 1965 at Covent
Garden, again as Tosca. She gave a number of master
classes in 1971-72. In the following two years, she toured with
Giuseppe di Stefano in recitals of arias with piano
accompaniment. She died in 1977 in Paris.
Debuts:
1938 - Stage debut as Santuzza in a
student performance of Cavalleria Rusticana
1939 - Professional debut in von Suppe's Boccaccio
at the National Lyric Theatre, Athens
1941 - Professional debut in a leading
role as Tosca at Athens Opera
1947 - Italian debut as Gioconda at the
Arena di Verona
alt.fan.maria-callas
- I can't access this group any more, so I'm not sure
it even still exists.
The la-divina
mailing list has moved.
To join the mailing listla-divina
(about as active as the alt.fan.maria-callas used to be,
but every once in a while there's a bit of activity),
send an e-mail to majordomo@smoe.org
with the words: subscribe la-divina
I've been setting up an access database to
keep my webpage discographies up to date, and I've finally got it
working fairly well (it's Access 2.0, so it's not quite as easy
as if I had the newest version of Access). The old versions of
the files are still available below (they have the advantage of
being much smaller files). In the process of importing text data
from my original web pages and the discography of a good friend,
Milan Petkovic, certain errors were sure to have crept in. I have
tried to check the information listed as much as possible, but
errors probably still remain. If you happen to catch an error,
PLEASE let me know (no one
ever writes me).
While in England for Christmas, I noticed a new
Callas book in the shops called Maria Callas:
Sacred Monster by Stelios Galatopoulos. It
includes great production photos, discography and
chronology. US release date is March 1999.
7 December, 1998:
The Metropolitan Opera web site has a new feature on Callas
as Lucia
Amadeus
Press is preparing to issue a corrected and revised
reprint of John Ardoin's long out-of-print Callas
at Juilliard: The Master Classes(see
Bibliography) with
new pages featuring music examples from the Italian
edition of the book. I hope to add a review of the book
soon.
Melodram is re-releasing CDs of performances from Mexico
City. Volume I (Golden Melodram GM 2.0015 - 10 CD) has
been released (see Discography)
and Volume II is coming soon.
Alma Bond's new book, The Autobiography of
Maria Callas(see Bibliography)
I received this announcement, and thought
I would pass it along for those that might be interested.
"The Autobiography of
Maria Callas," a novel written in the first
person by psychoanalyst Alma Bond as if Callas
herself were speaking, delves into the diva's
emotional life in a manner never attempted
before. According to John Ardoin, Music critic of
the Dallas News, it "is an admirable job of
balancing fact and conjecture..."
Not in frames?
If you want to easily navigate the entire site, I recommend using
the frames version of these pages (even if you normally hate
frames - try it out).
Enter the frames version at http://www.oocities.org/Vienna/Strasse/1523/
Last updated Sunday, 03 January 1999 10:55 AM Central Standard Time
