Born in New York in 1923 to Greek parents, Maria Callas participated in normal school productions (Ralph Rackstraw HMS Pinafore in New York), moved to Greece with her mother when her parents separated in 1937, and entered the Athens Conservatory the following year. As a student Callas sang Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana before being trained by Elvira de Hidalgo in coloratura roles. However she sang Tosca for the first time in 1942 and, following her return to America, was cast by a Chicago company as Turandot. Although the company folded prior to the performances, it led to Callas being chosen by Giovanni Zenatello to sing La Gioconda under Tullio Serafin in Verona in 1947. Later that year Serafin had her singing Isolde, and this in turn led to her performing Turandot several times during 1948. In 1949 she sang Brunnhilde in Walkure but had also in the meantime performed Norma! Finally, when Callas was asked by Serafin later that year to replace the indisposed Carosio in Bellini’s Puritani her career found some stability. She was coached in bel canto roles, (although she sang the heavier role of Aida for her 1950 La Scala debut), and she made house debuts as Norma in London (1952), Chicago (1954), New York Met (1956) and in concert in Paris (1958). For her debuts in Berlin (1955) and Vienna (1956) Callas performed Lucia.
Although Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi continued to form the mainstay of her repertoire there were anomalies: she sang in works of an earlier era such as Haydn’s Euridice, Iphigenie and Alceste (Gluck), Cherubini’s Medea and Giulia in Spontini’s La Vestale. She was also interested in certain verismo heroines such as Tosca and Maddalena in Andrea Chenier. She chose to record (but not sing on stage) a number of verismo roles including Mimi, Cio-Cio-San, Nedda, Manon Lescaut and most famously Carmen.
As well as Serafin, the principal guide of Callas’s career was her husband, the industrialist Giovanni Battista Meneghini, whom she met in 1946 and married in 1949 when he became her manager. Their relationship lasted until 1959 (the marriage was annulled in 1966), by which time she had become the lover of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis whom she had met in Venice. She had been the centre of media interest before, but when she quarreled in turn with the directors of Rome Opera, La Scala and the Met all in 1958 this became a media frenzy. By 1960 her career was in virtual tatters: her interest in performing seemed minimal as she focussed instead on Onassis. In 1964 Callas was tempted back to the stage by Franco Zeffirelli with offers to star in new productions of Tosca in London, Paris and the Met and a new Norma in Paris. However illness prevented Callas from completing all of these engagements and her final appearance on stage was at a Royal Gala performance of Tosca in London (5 July 1965).
Callas was devastated when Onassis married Jackie Kennedy in 1968. She made the highly publicized but unsuccessful Medea directed by Pasolini in 1969 but was something of a recluse until her series of master classes at New York’s Juilliard School in 1971 and 1972. Giuseppe di Stefano persuaded her to undertake a world-wide concert tour (1973-4) to raise funds for the medical treatment of his daughter. Neither artist had retained the vocal powers necessary for such a tour but they were received ecstatically at each venue. Following the tour Callas returned to her lonely life in Paris where she died on 16 September 1977.
Mention the words bel canto (literally ‘beautiful singing’) to most opera lovers and they will think of the works of Rossini (1792–1868), Donizetti (1797–1848) and Bellini (1801–35). These composers conceived their operas with certain singers in mind, artists who had spent many years perfecting their legato technique in lengthy sustained phrases and who were capable of launching into an elaborate vocal pyrotechnical display (fioritura). Gradually it became less easy to find sopranos capable of combining coloratura with dramatic credibility and the coloratura soprano became once more a songbird. It was not until the Maria Callas phenomenon in the 1950s, coupled with the scholarship of Richard Bonynge, his wife Joan Sutherland (ALC 1125, 1155, 1185), Marilyn Horne and others, that audiences began to see that Italian and French 19th century Romantic opera was not purely for ‘canary fanciers’.
