The Incomparable Maria Callas

The soprano legend Maria Callas was born in 1923 and through the magic of audio recordings, her once superb voice that vibrated with emotion like no other before or since will never die. She was the first modern soprano that revived forgotten operas of the "bel canto" repertoire. Her powerful will in searching for strong women roles resulted in a number of older, discarded operas being revived, including her showpiece Norma. 

She was born in New York, but moved to Athens at the age of 13, making her first major appearance there in 1941 as Tosca. 

Callas began her career in dramatic roles such as Isolde, Brünnhilde, Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor and Aïda. After 1949, encouraged at the La Scala opera in Milan by Tullio Serafin.

She sang principally at La Scala, the Rome and Paris operas, Covent Garden in London, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York due to her colour of voice, her dramatic presence, and her careful musicianship.

"For some 15 years after 1947 she was a symbol fired into the opera. It was an amazing career, and never did a singer have so faithful a body of admirers. She drove her audiences wild; she had a kind of electrical transmission that very few musicians have ever approached..." (Harold C. Schonber)

Callas dead at 53, blazed through the skies, but she is still alive through many millions of CDs, tapes or videos.

Ana Maria Ene
"D. Zamfirescu" School, Focsani, Romania
Teacher: Petru Dumitru <petrudumitru@netscape.net>