The charismatic soprano who changed the history of opera by exposing her personal life and bringing her own feelings to the stage would have been a hundred years old today. But Maria Callas died at 53, in her apartment in Paris, due to a medicated heart failure. His golden decade of the fifties, when he became a legend for his artistic level and unprecedented way of combining singing and theater, was behind him. Now voiceless, missing the stage and the family she never had, Callas lived her last years like a heroine in an operatic tragedy: alone, lost, abbandonata, as Manon sings...
"He wanted to bring the drama of life to the opera, and the drama ended up eating him, he became an opera character - affirms the opera critic of this newspaper, Jordi Maddaleno-. But Callas went beyond singing an aria very well: he didn't just get involved, he felt it. He reminded the world that opera is theatre, theater and song. When you listen to it, there is a truth, and it is a truth valid in 2023”.
Born in New York, she moved in 1937 with her mother and sister to her country of origin, Greece, where she had the great fortune of finding the Spanish soprano Elvira de Hidalgo as her teacher. Her life was tragic and beautiful like an opera, intertwined with Hollywood glamor - it was done with Grace Kelly, Yves Saint Laurent, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe... Pasolini or Visconti - but subjected to the psychological abuse of her ambitious mother , who wanted to exploit her as a singer or prostitute her with soldiers, in World War II. "I hope you have throat cancer", the peculiar lady would wish him. Marrying the industrialist Battista Meneghini, 27 years her senior, was a kind of refuge, until she felt "feminine" with Aristotelis Onassis.
"It's surprising how strong of a character she was and how emotionally fragile she was, because Onassis destroyed her. It was the beginning of the end for Callas: he mistreated her, abused her psychologically and she became nothing," says Maddaleno.
According to biographies, the shipping magnate sedated her to subject her to unwanted sexual practices. And he forced her to have an abortion when she became pregnant in 1966. Two years later, the man announced his wedding to Jackie Kennedy. The soprano, who had renounced her American nationality in order not to be registered as married, found out from the press... Onassis would end up leaving the widow of J.F. Kennedy and would serenade her under the balcony until she understood again...
"Opera singers have always been great stars, but at no other time did they coincide with actresses under the same banner. Callas broke this by bringing opera to Hollywood level and bringing the drama and personal life of the singers to the same parameters as those of film artists", says agent Aleix Palau, founder of the Josep Palet singing competition.
"Callas fueled scandals: from his personal life, the bad relationship with the New York Met... He gave exclusives, had the press waiting at the airport, dropped iconic phrases in every interview. She was a whirlwind of a woman, tall, thin, a different paradigm to that of opera singers. And the image exploded: you only have to see photos of Venice when she went to sing at the Fenice: Channel, elegance at the level of Hollywood artists... She suffered because she was the partner of one of the greatest tycoons in history, but at the same time he made a profit".
"Yes, because he incorporated it into the interpretation - argues Maddaleno -: you heard Norma's lament and you knew it was also her lament, abandoned by Onassis. He brought the tycoon's betrayal to the stage. 'How can I sing with more truth, if not!'". If anything, was he disguising his vocal difficulties with drama at one point? "Let's say it was embellished with believable tragedy, and it transported you," says Palau.
But what happened that January 2, 1958 at the Opera in Rome, with the President of the Republic inaugurating the season in a high-level gala? It was sounded like Callas planted them. He sang the first act of Norma and played the second. Did he really have bronchitis? The press crucified her while she defended herself: "The first act was sung out of respect for Bellini - said the restorer of the bel canto repertoire - the other acts were not vilified". The next day he saw that the lynching had begun. Callas fell, like Violetta in La traviata, with "nil" hope of regeneration.
The race had started with a super instrument. The diva had a multiple record: lyrical, dramatic and coloratura. According to De Hidalgo, she was a formidable student and very musical, who was the first to arrive and the last to leave, so she listened to all the students, whether they were tenors or coloratura... "Thus a idea of how to get all the grades and do everything that was proposed", explained his teacher.
It is said that in the same week she sang Bellini's I puritani and Wagner's Brunhilde: "There cannot be two more different roles and she played them. That's how it went with his voice", laments Maddaleno, not without admiration. Callas reached the treble and bass, but it wasn't all homogeneity. His most impactful role would be, the critic indicates, La Gioconda, for spinto-dramatic. "To the suicide aria! , she seems now a soprano, now a mezzo, now a contralto". And its most deplorable version? The 1973-74 tour with Giuseppe Di Stefano. But she still had the magnetism.
