Maria by Callas, the Movie

I went today to see Maria by Callas, a movie on the life of Maria Callas, born Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos in Manhattan. Callas is seen from the perspective of her own words.  In the movie she is seen and heard speaking, but I heard only English and French. The speaking voice reading things written by Callas was Joyce DiDonato.  Extensive footage of Callas in interviews is included, including a long one with David Frost and another with Barbara Walters.

We were shown the most important people in her life:  her mother Elmina Evangelia who organized her life into a musical career, her teacher Elvira de Hidalgo who created her wonderful technique, her husband the wealthy industrialist Giovanni Battista Meneghini who acted as her manager for most of her career, and her boy friend Aristotle Onassis.  They don't get to speak for themselves, but there is footage for all four.

Callas's voice swells to anger only in discussing the breakup with Rudolph Bing, then the manager of the Metropolitan Opera. She wanted new productions. Someone who has already triumphed at La Scala has a right to expect this. But she blames Meneghini for these problems. After the blow up with Bing, she separated from Meneghini.

Anyone interested in Callas should see this. It is best for the pictures and films from all phases of her career and for the carefully selected recordings that play throughout. My favorite was "La mamma morta." I thought I spotted Franco Corelli several times. Even as a very young woman her huge voice boomed out. She was even chosen as a Wagner singer at the start. It was her giant voice that separated her from the crowd.

This is the one

I've been listening to "Vicino a Te" quite a lot, and this is the one.

One seems always to return to Callas.  I received a comment here that said her voice did not deteriorate.  It is important to remember that she retired from the stage when she was only 42, very young for such a big voice.  In contrast Mirella Freni recorded Manon Lescaut with Pavarotti when she was 58.

Smoking

There is to this day constant speculation whether or not Maria Callas's vocal decline was due to her weight loss.  She liked to point out that her greatest recordings were made when she was skinny, her word.  Why is it that no one proposes that her vocal decline and premature death were due to lung damage brought on by SMOKING?

Just so you are not too shocked, here is Renata Tibaldi, Callas's great contemporary and rival, smoking.  I can't tell if Mario Del Monaco is also smoking, but there is something that might be a wisp of smoke in the upper right.  In the old days everyone smoked.

And why is it never proposed that Enrico Caruso died because of smoking?

This is Corelli.

And this is Fischer-Dieskau.

Now everyone takes selfies.

"Al dolce guidami" from Anna Bolena

Maria Callas.  

Modern bel canto singing starts with Callas.  This role was written for Giuditta Pasta, a singer who is now considered a mezzo.  Perhaps it validates my opinion that Callas was also a mezzo.  The aria only goes up to an A, and already she shows a wobble.  Overall this is an outstanding performance with great simplicity.

Edita Gruberova. 

Gruberova does more with the rhythm than anyone of this group. The army of commenters all seem to want to critique the sound of the singers' voices. They never say what they like. They just trash the one you're hearing. I'm far more interested in the style and like Gruberova more here than some other places. She is a very creative artist. She has announced her departure from the Bavarian State Opera because they don't use her much now. She would like to continue singing.

Montserrat Caballe.  

Begin 4:20.  From the comments I begin to believe that those who make nasty cracks like voices no heavier than Caballe.  This is elegant and sweet.  No one would mistake her for a mezzo.  Of course, if you sit around reading YouTube comments, you know that someone will mistake anything.

Anna Netrebko. 

If Pasta was a mezzo, she might have sounded more like Trebs than most of the other ladies. This is Netrebko after the baby, and my sense of this is that she is struggling with her new voice.

Angela Gheorghiu.  

Begin 4:08.  For my ears Angela is one of the most stylish singers that ever existed.  No one slides better.  She draws me, but also has quite a light voice. 

Joan Sutherland 

This is just for fun.  Everyone has their opinions.  After reading the latest study, perhaps the supercritics all live in Louisiana and Texas.  The most favorable ratings seem always to go to the most boring performances.  What fun is that?

We must change our lives -- Interview with Cecilia Bartoli

[Dr. B: This is my translation of an interview from DIE ZEIT, on May 7, 2013 by Christine Lemke-Matwey. Thanks to the Forum. The interviewer has a somewhat literary style that is a bit beyond my capabilities, but I will do what I can.]

Cecilia Bartoli is the prima donna assoluta of our time. In Salzburg she sings for the first time in Vincenzo Bellini's opera Norma. [She actually debuted this role in Dortmund in 2010.] A conversation about tragic female characters, matching shoes and Italian politics

The Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli Salzburg, in April, to any halfway post card enabled corner is cut, milled, dug and built at the station anyway and still, the 470 years old Sternbräu they even have quite plucked away (the traditional restaurant needs a "facelift", it's called). Just there Cecilia Bartoli struggles towards the festival building, packed over hill and dale with several bags. It's a pretty picture, as the artist, dressed in black, passes an election poster of incumbent Governor Gabi Burgstaller on ("Who is the man in the word does not run away from it") on the Social Democrat to the red Snow-mouth wearing a yellow "pay attention" jacket.

The Bartoli guided Whitsun Festival held this year little fits the motto of "Opfer" [victim or sacrifice-her theme for the Pfingstfestpiele]. She herself on May 17 in the House for Mozart will debut as Vincenzo Bellini's Norma - a role that hardly anyone would have believed of her. [I have translated this paragraph very badly. Salzburg is getting a facelift. Cecilia is trudging through construction obstacles with a lot of baggage, passing political posters for an upcoming election.]

Cecilia Bartoli: Buon giorno, we are sitting in the audience, yes? You can see there some of our Norma stage set.

DIE ZEIT: Signora Bartoli, hasn't the Salzburg public who you know like to interfere in artistic matters, not complained about your festival motto? Among young people in Germany is "Opfer" [victim] a dirty word, no one would like to be a victim.

Bartoli: I love the German word "Opfer"! It shimmers, it has very different meanings depending on the perspective from which you look at it. The English know for "Opfer" two concepts: sacrifice and victim, so also "Opfer bringen" [bring sacrifice] and even "Opfer sein" [be a victim], ​​victims of oppression, victims of hate and violence, victims of their own overconfidence. However, as an Italian woman, I think also of the Latin, offere, to the "Offertory" in the Catholic Mass ...

DIE ZEIT: And after this little etymological excursion, Governor Burgstaller was reassured?

Bartoli: To me no one has complained. And it would be no bad thing if the politicians would take the art so seriously that they could be provoked by an opera from 1831!  By a woman like Bellini's Norma, who comes to us as a very human example of someone who in a conflict situation sacrifices: her children, her love and her life. Norma has the power to overcome her emotions. Who today is still able to do this?

In the audience, there is dim light for a rehearsal break. The stage set can be seen to some extent, the notes and notes of the reporter are not. So be it. Cecilia Bartoli speaks in a low voice, almost beseechingly, her eyes flashing. Her latest personal excavation lies close to her heart, one sees.

Bartoli: What do you see on stage?

ZEIT: Mattresses on the floor, a bicycle on the wall, tables, chairs ... a building from the thirties or forties of the 20th Century, I would say maybe a school that has been misused and now serves as a storage building?

Bartoli: Not bad! When Norma was premiered in 1831 in Milan, Italy was occupied ...

ZEIT: By Austria.

Bartoli: Yes, dear Salzburger, by Austria! And Bellini's librettist Felice Romani saw himself naturally confronted by the censorship of the occupiers, that is, he must tell the story he wanted to tell by making it as innocuous as possible, putting in some exotic costumes. He did that. The Italians are the Gauls, the Austrians are the Romans, and the whole thing takes place in the first Century before Christ. Norma is a rebellious, highly political piece, it's about rebellion, about the struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. The Austrians were able to easily misunderstand. On the other hand Norma is about love and passion, and about a larger than life conflict: Norma, the Gallic Druid priestess who loves the Roman Pollione, she loves her greatest enemy and even has two children with him. How will she ever explain this to her people?

ZEIT: Anything that has to do with love, one takes easily from Italian opera. The political, however, one likes to see and hear far away.

Bartoli This is why we build two bridges in Salzburg: a musical one that tackles the bel canto and has been meticulously researched, with which singers, vocal subjects which Bellini had in 1831. I tell you what Maurizio Biondi and Riccardo Minasi ...

ZEIT: ... the two editors of the first critical edition of Norma ...

Bartoli: ... have it all figured out, this is the purest detective story! As the autograph of the score speaks to one, that gives me goosebumps to this day, this wealth of information! One has only to read it correctly. And we also build a scenic bridge, one that puts the action in the Second World War, when the Fascists in Italy reigned and the people were oppressed in other ways. Norma is now a partisan, a woman, as we know from the movies of Italian neorealism, Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City and other films. If you like, the Salzburg Norma is not least a tribute to Anna Magnani, the great Italian actress, and I have the honor in this production to look a bit like her.

ZEIT: The Magnani was also only 1.60 meters tall.

Bartoli: Thanks for the compliment. Maria Malibran, after Giuditta Pasta one of the most famous Normas of all, should even have been five centimeters shorter!

ZEIT: Do we have today, in the era of quotas and post-gender debates, a problem with towering women, with priestesses and prima donnas? Why on the stage do they always bow down to "normal" people.

Bartoli: Because Superior is not in flowing robes or the base on which these women were asked, but in the personality, the charisma! This must be visible. But maybe we distrust such personalities also stronger than before, because we ourselves produce hardly any. That goes especially for the music: We have never seen so many well-trained singers like today - and so few exciting performers, so few artists who follow their inner vision and don't allow themselves to be irritated by any market and any fashion. Another example: What is beauty? The nose is like this, the lips like this, the makeup like this, between New York and Salzburg everything looks the same. And the one who deviates from the norm is considered controversial. We have no more desire to be different.

ZEIT: Maria Callas was also like this in the fifties, otherwise why would she have starved away 30 kilos in just one season?

Bartoli: In her roles she was different, and that's the difference. Today, globalization is sitting in the middle of the stage. Maria Callas was not just the sad jet set icon and rival of Jackie Kennedy, she was primarily an outstanding artist! What Norma recording do you have at home?

ZEIT: The classic is probably the one with Callas, Christa Ludwig, Franco Corelli and Tullio Serafin from 1960. You know the legendary photo that shows Callas and Ludwig in the studio, singing the duet "Si, fino all'ore estreme" in the second act? Callas is with wasp waist and high heels on the front of the microphone, Ludwig is a meter behind, her stockings on, she has her worn out shoes next to her.

Bartoli: This photo is a wonderful metaphor for what happens when the performance practice is more important than all the manuscripts and historical sources. In the 20th Century no one thought that Bellini was a contemporary of Schubert, a composer on the cusp of early romantic! They saw only the great prima donnas with their great voices and wondered how you could satisfy them. They cobbled them to foreign title roles and changed the voice classifications and keys, let the dynamics be dynamic, tempi tempi and retouched sometimes this way and sometimes that. What barbaric acts! Giuditta Pasta, the Norma of the Milan premiere, must, according to all that we know, have been a mezzo-soprano, while the first Adalgisa, Giulia Grisi, was a lyric soprano - exactly the other way around from Callas and Ludwig, or Sutherland and Marilyn Horne! Isn't that crazy?

ZEIT: Maria Callas did everything wrong?

Bartoli: That's not the point. It's about freeing a piece like Norma of the patina to make it easier to understand. Take Norma's famous Cavatina "Casta diva" in the first act: There is an enormous difference if the introduction is played with a wooden flute or a modern instrument made of metal, and if I vocally regard the whole thing as a prayer and consequently sing piano, pianissimo, or I regard it as a display piece, with a fully loaded Opera House waiting. Callas was a child of her time, and I am too. Speaking of Callas ... (Cecilia Bartoli digs in one of her bags and brings out a pair of flat, worn out boots.) These will be my Norma shoes! Something more comfortable than high heels, don't you think? Norma is our partisan, as I said, she has to be fast and good on her feet.

ZEIT: Evil tongues say that through your archaeological research and discoveries you would find for yourself as it were a side entrance into a repertoire for which you do not have the voice under conventional conditions.

Bartoli: I never wanted to sing Norma, how would I ever have come to such an absurd idea? It was only when I was studying Maria Malibran, the great bel canto singer, with her repertoire, it was not until I saw: Ah, she sings many of my roles, but she also sings Norma, I asked myself: How can that be? No, no, the shoe is the other way around (she stretches the Norma-boots in the air and laughs): The modern orchestra does not love the singer.  Between pit and stage is not communicated, but roared. Below the instruments roar, above the singers roar, and now guess who wins in the end. That's why I much prefer working with specialist ensembles.

ZEIT: Will you expand your circles of the early Romantic period wider to Verdi or Puccini?

Bartoli: But yes, only with Wagner I'll wait a bit! Seriously, Wagner has opened my eyes and ears. I was very young when I heard Die Walküre at the New York Met.   4,000 seats, a huge room, a huge orchestra, huge voices. Mamma mia, I thought, if Wagner here already sounds like this, how did he first sound in Germany, in Bayreuth? The next summer, Jimmy Levine invited me to Bayreuth, and again I heard Die Walküre - and I sat there and was thunderstruck! 1,000 seats, a cover over the orchestra pit, all very small, very intimate. That was what Wagner wanted! How can we have just misunderstand him so?

ZEIT: Wagner was a passionate advocate of Italian bel canto, he adored Bellini. What can the Germans today learn from the Italians?

Bartoli: Not much, I fear. If you believe our politicians and you can see how the culture budget is cut and slashed everywhere, the opera plays almost no more role. This does not mean that there is no audience for it, but it is, and I think this is fatal, that the musical life is limited to a few large houses and that there only are played La Traviata, La Boheme, Madame Butterfly and Turandot. Verismo, verismo, verismo, the purest dictatorship! What an impoverishment! Where are Monteverdi, Pergolesi, Vivaldi, Rossini, Caldara? What a rich opera nation we were!

ZEIT: Couldn't politics benefit from opera? If you closed the Roman Parliament in a Salzburg Norma performance, sent ...

Bartoli: ... then maybe some would realize that we need to change our lives. We cannot go on like this, it is irresponsible to have a family of five cars and five computers, just because there are five family members. We must learn to do without, and now I'm back at the " Opfer " We have to make sacrifices in order to overcome the crisis that 20 years under Silvio Berlusconi have maneuvered us into. And it is not only an economic crisis, it is also and above all the spirit of the culture. Italia appartene all'italiani [Italy belongs to the Italians], do you understand? (Am I deceived, or does Cecilia Bartoli suddenly have tears in her eyes?) Italy does not belong to the politicians, it's ours. We must realize that we need to take care of our garden. Then we will also be useful for Europe someday.

ZEIT: Norma goes to her death at the end, she dies for her children and for her unfaithful lover. Is not that a typically female solution from a typical male point of view? The woman clears out - and immediately the world is back on track?

Bartoli: Afterward Pollione follows her, so the loads are not distributed very unevenly. But I know what you mean. For me it is important that Norma takes the initiative, because we are not much further than by Bellini. Why are there so few women in leadership positions, why must the Pope still be a man? Imagine, if in March in the Vatican instead of Signor Bergoglio a Signora Bergoglia was announced! It would have been an explosion! We may have no fear. Some want a female Pope, others listen all their lives to Maria Callas, the third group are most likely at home in the kitchen cooking Pasta alla Norma. The main thing, we do what we do voluntarily.

ZEIT: What's the recipe again? [For Pasta alla Norma, we presume.]

Bartoli: eggplant, tomatoes, basil, ricotta salata - a typical dish of the south, Bellini was Sicilian. The eggplant should be crispy on the outside and inside so tender that they melt on the tongue. As with a mature, fulfilling sound.

[More pictures here.]

[Dr. B:  The interviewer is the same woman who did the interview here, different newspaper.  She's very in your face with Cecilia, much more than other interviewers.  My present plans are to attend the final Norma performance in the summer.]

After Callas

Maria Callas was simply incredible.  She understood the flow of the phrase more completely than anyone else.  I especially enjoy when a singer can stretch out the tempo and carry the phrase over larger and larger landscapes.

Many people don't like her, usually because of the gradual deterioration of her tone as she got older.  My current theory is that she was a pushed up mezzo, and that when she was preparing her spectacular performances, that was the last thing she worried about.  The clue is that mezzo roles fit so well into her voice.

What we look for in a modern day performer--at least this is what I think--is that each creates her own unique performance.  I look for the heart and soul of the singer who stands before me.  Believe me.  If there existed in the time since Callas anyone who could work the Callas magic, she would have done so by now.

I tried to communicate my position in my long essay on performing the mad scene from I Puritani.  If you prefer to sit home and listen to recordings of La Divina, by all means do.  Just don't come around when we're enjoying someone new and trash them because they're not as good as the long dead Callas.  We want the new singers to be the best that they are capable of.  We want to be thrilled by what they bring to the performance.

I always feel that the less I know about a performance before I hear it the better.  I want to be surprised.  The easiest way to avoid comparisons with Callas is never to have heard her.

Maria Callas

Why Maria Callas? What is all the fuss about? I realize it is absurd to write about this.

People write on and on about her voice. They love it. They hate it. I claim that her voice is almost irrelevant. Almost because it must have sufficient force to portray the music she likes to sing. It has.

It is simply the musical perfection. You hear every note. She phrases with a genius that is almost unknown. Then she has the force to back it up.

Why is Before Ari so much better than After Ari? It isn't the voice that is different. It is the phrasing. Over the period of idleness she has lost her muscle tone and never really manages to get it back. Perfect phrasing requires a mind of genius and a body strong enough for absolute control. She never found it again.

Or. If no one argues with me, I'm happy to argue with myself. Compare this from 1965. It's pretty damn fabulous. Who says she couldn't still do it?

Controversy

Jonas Kaufmann's album is controversial, it seems.

One of the reasons I posted the discussion of the I Puritani mad scene contest is to try to make clear that different performances of the same piece can be all over the map. Just the selection of performances of this particular aria are amazingly varied. I also tried to make clear that my own particular reaction to a performance is a matter of my own particular taste. I have modified this entry to include Bartoli, Callas and Dessay. I didn't post it to create in anyone the desire to fly off and start ranting about how horrible any particular performance is.

What usually happens is that things go on a certain way until someone unusual comes along and changes it. Maria Callas was such a person. We think today that a performance of Callas's repertoire must resemble Callas's performance, or it is incorrect. The truth is that before Callas no one sang things the way Callas did. Does that mean everyone else was wrong?

With their astoundingly different voices and performances I think both Netrebko and Dessay are heart singers and bring true feeling for the music into their work. They are the people I want to hear. And I completely love the fact that Cecilia's version resembles nothing you've ever heard before.

If anyone out there knows what they are saying about Jonas, links, etc., please let me know.

I Puritani contest

I did a chart of the current I Puritani mad scene from YouTube to try to get an idea of the differences between the voices. I have modified the original contest selection to include Maria Callas 1949, Cecilia Bartoli 2007 and Natalie Dessay 2007. Only the cabaletta is considered. All of these performances are on YouTube. [Maybe not any more-can't currently find Bartoli.]

I tried to evaluate them by categories:

My opinion of their tone.
How slurred are the fast notes.
How much scooping and sliding.
How many added notes, trills, etc.
How do they treat rhythm and tempo.
General style.

There is wide variation in each category.

Tone



Lucia Aliberti was vying for the Maria Callas award, due to the strange darkness of her tone. Most have strong but not dark voices. Occasionally she actually sounds like Callas.

Cecilia's Maria

It is the utter flawlessness of her sense of rhythm that contrasts her with all others. It doesn't seem to matter what the music is, it will be fascinating and completely her own. The flexibility of the phrasing here is amazing even for her.

She is my siren, and I cannot resist her call. This is the Cecilia my heart has yearned for. Her voice is now fully mature, and she uses it with astounding self-confidence, reaching every possible note, soaring and growling. There is new depth and warmth in her voice, new colors of great beauty. I think I'll just curl up and purr for a while.

I am going to attempt to review Cecilia Bartoli's new album Maria, which is possible as long as impartiality is not required. She is proposing nothing less than revolution. She is telling us that people following in the footsteps of Callas when performing bel canto are doing it wrong. She makes some good points.

This is Cecilia meeting Callas in heaven.

In the liner notes she points out that Malibran sang "Adina [L'elisir d'amore] and Leonore [Fidelio?], Amina [Bellini's La sonnambula] as well as Romeo [I Capuleti e i Montecchi?], and in the same opera, both Semiramide and Arsace [Rossini's Semiramide], Desdemona and even Otello [Rossini's Otello]." This strongly implies a different vocal technique from present day standards. The heavier the technique the more differentiated the classifications. Malibran must have used a lighter technique, a technique very much like Cecilia Bartoli's.

Cecilia is seducing us with the lightness of early instruments and the lightness of her technique to like a much more flexible and enticing style of singing. She wants nothing less than the opera world to follow her.

The phrasing is sinuous as nothing I've ever heard. Will she succeed?

Miscellaneous:
There is a credit for the yodeling teacher, Nadia Raess.

There is also a very nice photo of Cecilia and Christopher Raeburn together honoring his 50th year with Decca. I would guess it was probably him she did it for. I'll take it anyway.
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Life and Death

I am interested in this book by Norman Lebrecht called The Life and Death of Classical Music. It's misnamed. He's writing about the classical recording industry, which I have read is the fastest growing segment of the recording industry overall, and not about classical music per se. The people who say it's growing are talking about Bocelli, Brightman, Church, Jenkins, those types, as well as crossover records by Pavarotti, Te Kanawa, Domingo, etc. The people who say it's dead limit their numbers to legitimate classical music.

He attributes this death to capitalism. Corporations require activities to generate profits, and not very many classical recordings manage that.

There is a list of the 25 all time best selling records.
#1 is Solti's Ring cycle.
#2, #4, and #20 are the three tenors with a total of 23 million records.
#9 is a Christmas record with Pavarotti, and #15 is Neapolitan songs by Pavarotti.
#16 is Kiri's Christmas record.
#13 is Carmina Burana.
#8 is Callas in Tosca.
#25 is Caruso arias.

Only 10 out of the 25 contain no singing, and these include three different recordings of the Vivaldi Four Seasons--#3, #11 and #21.
#14 is Dennis Brain's recording of the Mozart Horn Concertos, the only Mozart in the list.
#17 is Glenn Gould's early version of the Goldberg Variations, the only Bach in the list.

Only two items are in the classical to romantic symphony tradition: Beethoven 9 and Beethoven 5. There are no Mozart, Brahms or even Tchaikovsky symphonies.

The most interesting item in the list is #22, the Dawn Upshaw recording of Gorecki's Third Symphony. This is wonderful. I enjoy this recording very much and am encouraged to see it in this list. He thinks it doesn't play in concert halls, but I saw it with the San Francisco Symphony and a Polish singer, and I thought it made an excellent impression. It seems simple, perhaps too simple for the average symphony crowd.

He says something interesting. The lists of records reviewed in Gramophone magazine every month include large numbers of vanity pressings.

Cecilia Bartoli is the second ranked diva after Maria Callas, though he gives her only 4 million. She herself says 5 million, and I've heard it go as high as 7 million. [Feb 2010 I read 8 million.] The other high selling singers are Pavarotti, Callas, Domingo and Carreras.

The list is filled out by conductors who have an unfair advantage. Virtually everything includes a conductor. I was surprised to see Toscanini only as high as #11. Karajan is #1. These are the people he is interested in, the people discussed in the main text.

He talks about his list of 100 great recordings, plus an additional list of great performers completely botching things. The latter includes the Swingle Singers, a group I rather liked.

He succeeds in rousing my curiosity to hear these. He has stories. Cecilia's early Rossini album is her only item in his list, and he may be right. Her extreme youth makes her unaware of the difficulty of what she is undertaking, and the result is an awesome casualness of phrasing.

He likes Lisa Della Casa rather more than I do, and recommends several of her recordings. Willard White's Porgy is there.

I could repeat all his stories, but perhaps you should read them yourself. Lebrecht has a weekly column here.
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Name calling, part II

So what are they talking about?

Maria Callas had a big voice with lots of squillo and a burning ambition. From deep in her soul she wanted to be a star. She worked very hard to develop a proper bel canto technique and keep the flexibility in her voice. She was both naturally expressive and completely obsessive. She cared about expression and developed her interpretations with great care. Her voice, her character, her technique, her expression, her ambition all combined to make a very great artist. That's why it was so shocking when she suddenly abandoned opera for mere celebrity.

So every dark voice with a bit of coloratura is "the next Maria Callas."

The route to greatness, the route followed by Maria herself, lies in beating ones own path, in making music that is completely ones own, in defying comparison. No artist succeeds by imitation.

When I look around at the singers today, only Angela and Cecilia seem to burn for it. Cecilia's gifts don't lie in Callas's spinto repertoire. I haven't always liked what she was doing, but she more than anyone working today is blazing her own trail, creating performances of true originality. Her creativity is astounding.

Anna does not burn for it. She would never have backed down on her bid for Austrian citizenship if she did.

When they say someone is the "next Maria Callas," they're just wishing. They want to sit in a hall and feel their spine tingling, their soul shaking as it once did with Callas. We want to be thrilled and not merely entertained.

Name calling

I promise never to say that someone is the "next Maria Callas." Thank you.

Toujour

This film, La Callas Toujour from EMI of Maria Callas in recital at the Paris opera in 1958 is a joy. One suffers terribly from not having seen anything of her except the Tosca Act II from Ed Sullivan. Here she is in concert doing the first act of Norma, an aria from Il Trovatore and "Una voce poco fa" by Rossini. Then in the second half of the concert she performs Tosca Act II in costume with Tito Gobbi as Scarpia. What a magnificent artist.

She came equipped with this huge buzz saw voice that simply cut through everything she saw, and then she handled it with such grace and control. The brightness of her tone and the completeness of her technique, and the greatness of her musical intelligence allowed her complete control of her phrasing. "Una voce poco fa" is particularly a joy to see.

It's not a beautiful voice. Why hear this? Because you cannot keep it out. Because it takes hold of you whether you wish it to or not.

In Norma the sound of her voice makes possible this marvelous controlled performance. She never shifts into heavy chest, never descends into melodrama, always keeps her control of the phrase. In every note is perfect truth.

It is wonderful to see her acting. She shows Tosca's sweetness and vulnerability as well as her anger and strength. Watch it without the titles. She seems fragile and vulnerable herself, something I did not expect. 1958 was in the middle of her troubles with the press. One wishes there were more films.

Gobbi is also magnificent as Scarpia.
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Norma

I bought also the 1978 film of Montserrat Caballe’s Norma from the Bel Canto Society.

The character of Norma is one of the things that keeps this opera at the top of the bel canto repertoire. She is a powerful woman, the head of her Druid religion, but bound in this role to complete chastity. Instead, she has two sons by Pollione, the Roman consul. When she finds he is having an affair with Adalgisa, another priestess, she contemplates murdering his sons, like Medea, but decides instead to send them to her father. The opera ends with Norma and Pollione being burned alive, a particularly gruesome way to die.

The other thing that keeps us listening is the incredible vocal line that Bellini has composed. Phrasing “Casta diva” is one of the great tests for a soprano.

The role is defined for us today by the 1954 and 1962 recordings of Maria Callas. Caballe and Callas performed the same repertoire but were very different singers. The first difference is in the sound of their voices: Callas had a hardness in her tone which made it easy for her to bring intensity and drama into her characterizations, while Caballe with her large, beautiful instrument must work harder to get the right theatrical effect with her voice.

In this video Caballe shifts frequently into a heavy chest voice for effect. Callas in the same music can concentrate on the line and get all the drama she needs from her emotions without deliberately manipulating her tone. Of course, there are the Callas high notes in the later recording. Caballe’s voice is always beautiful throughout its range. I never feel that I mind the sound of Callas’ voice. It expresses what she wants to say.

Is it unfair to compare the two? The “Casta diva” on the Caballe biography video with the white robes blowing in the wind is better than this one, where she works very hard to bring drama into her characterization to the detriment of the overall sound. The sweetness of her character is also at odds with Norma's. The singing in Semiramide and Roberto Devereaux is more spectacular.

That said, Caballe comes as close as anyone has to Callas’ standard. I think if I was to pick just one video of the three for Caballe, it would be Roberto Devereaux, perhaps in the version from the bel canto society.

Callas

There is a wonderful article in Opera News about Maria Callas this month. It is exactly what I would want to read about Callas—what other singers think of her legacy, which only grows with each passing decade. I remember buying a Callas recording recently, and the clerk said to me, “She’s bigger than ever.”

Opera is by far the most complicated of all art forms. It subsumes the entire art of theater, goes on to encompass music and tops the whole thing off with its own invented art form: operatic singing. This gives each individual performer enormous scope.

Read the article for yourself. For me Callas is leaving no stone unturned. She fully expresses at the level of theater, and at the level of music and as a singer. They say that she read and understood the words, and therefore she was great. That’s good. I certainly wouldn’t argue about it. But she also understood and fully expressed it as singing. She was able to translate her own very personal emotional understanding of a role into music, producing a level of expression never exceeded and seldom equaled. Saying that it’s words is just not enough.

Did you notice in “The Bridges of Madison County” that Merle Streep is alone in the kitchen, listening to opera on the radio, and the recording is Callas singing “Casta diva?” This is a test.

Maria Callas is opera.

Old email about "Sacred Monster"

[Dr B--Friend who played her in "Masterclass" has mentioned that she feels personally compromised by the content of the Maria Callas biography "Sacred Monster."]

You feel personally compromised. How interesting. I think you should get over this. This is not the Maria Callas we thought we knew. She was completely transformed in my mind. I immediately went out and bought a bunch of recordings. I especially wanted to hear La Traviata because I was familiar with her mainly through Norma and Medea, quite different operas. I wanted to hear her more lyric side. I still feel exhausted after listening for a while. She was the most intense singer I've ever heard.

I went into Virgin to buy the CDs and was prattling on about the book, and the clerk said "She was never hotter." This is what opera should be. We should feel our souls laid bare.

I found the parts about the scandals, the sudden explosion of negative publicity surrounding completely trivial performance cancellations extremely shocking. No one seemed to come to her rescue. I am convinced that these things altered the course of her life much more than Mr. Onassis. The author has done her a great service.

Maybe it's her name. Maybe Giovanna Piccolini would work better than Ruth Ann Swenson. An american girl of swedish extraction doesn't seem like an opera singer.

Maria Callas, Life and Art

I own and have read a lot of books about Maria Callas, and I am now at the point where I know too much. She was a very great singer of uneven discipline even while she was married to Giovanni Battide Meneghini. Once Meneghini was no longer part of her life all hints of self-discipline went with him.

The life of a professional opera singer requires that she keep her support muscles constantly in training. Requires. There has been a lot of speculation over the years about the effect of Callas’ weight loss on these support muscles, and a lot of blame has been put here. When I listen to her singing before and after the weight loss, I don’t hear a lot of changes.

With her affair with Onasis attention to training appears to have ended.

The film closes with the concert series done with Di Stephano. I think at that time she was not yet 50. I don’t hear significant changes in her voice, though the hardness is a bit more pronounced. She could well have continued her career at this point. What I hear is huge changes in the amount of control she is able to exert over her voice due to the collapse in her conditioning. Control of the line is the key to good bel canto, and this is achieved through consistent support. By that time it simply wasn’t happening any more. Her brain remembered, but her body did not.

She was too into her own success and basically messed everything up. The film discusses this more openly than I have heard in the past. It is painful to read and to see in this video: Maria Callas, Life and Art.
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