Maria Callas: La Voz del Olympus
Opera is one of the most complex art forms. It combines performance, song, music, costumes, stage and sometimes the dance. Opera composers base their works on very tragic stories of love and death. Beyond the beauty of the work, the weight of the opera falls to the singers who must invoke anger, cruelty, violence, fear or madness of history. In this area María Callas, known for her legions of fans as ‘La Diva’, was exceptional.
María Callas was one of the best -known opera singers in the world. During the fifties, he became famous internationally for his beautiful voice and intense personality. Even today, her recordings singing iconic operas of her career are still favorite by genre lovers. His fame derived not only from his unique voice, but also from his moving capacity for action. His histrionism was attributed, at least in part, to his life full of torment and passion.
The beginnings of "La Divina"
María Callas was born in New York City in 1923. His real name was Anna Maria Sophia Cecilia Kalogheropoulos. His parents were Greeks. When he was fourteen, his parents divorced and she and her mother returned to Greece. Maria studied song at the National Conservatory of Athens. The well -known opera singer Elvira de Hidalgo chose Maria as her student.
His musical career began at a very early age. In 1941, when she was seventeen, María Callas was paid for the first time in a large opera. She sang the main papers in several operas in Athens for the next three years.
Upon his return to New York in 1945, he paid his song studies taking care. This invitation to act in Italy, was the real beginning of his profession of his career.
The apogee of the diva
In 1949, he married an Italian industrialist, Giovanni Battista Meneghini. Her husband, who was older than her for twenty years, became her manager and advisor. In 1950, María Callas first acted in the famous Opera House La Scala in Milan, Italy. She sang like Aida in the famous ‘eida’ opera by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. But it was not until the following year, when she played the role of Norma, of the Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, that Callas won the love and admiration of the public of Milan, entering the ranks of the immortals of the opera.
In her first twenty years María Callas sang in about forty main operas in the most famous opera theaters in the world. She sang dramatic roles as heavy as Gioconda, Turandot, Brünnhilde and Isolde, but throughout her career her most famous roles became: Norma and Amina de Bellini (the Sonnambula);Violetta de Verdi (La Traviata);Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena de Donizetti, Medea de Cherubini and Tosca de Puccini. Although his bell was not always conventionally beautiful, the musicality and expression of Callas were of their own class. His characters came to life, with his ability to color their tone and make insightful use of the text. Callas is attributed the change in the history of opera. It was imposed from it to put an emphasis on musical integrity and dramatic truth. María Callas managed to transform the perceptions of Bel Canto’s repertoire, especially works by Bellini and Donizetti. The secret of her success is that she embodied her characters. During her career, María Callas made many operas that had fallen into the dark for decades due to the lack of singers capable of doing justice.
In 1956, he first appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She sang the main role in the ‘norm’ opera of Bellini. It was a resounding success.
His immortalized voice
People who listened to María Callas say they will never forget the experience. When she was not singing in the operas season, she made recordings. Among the singers of her time, it was she who made more recordings. His voice remains immortalized in the many recordings that his audience treasures. Some experts say that María Callas is currently as popular, as it was when she acted on stages around the world.
The decline of his career
Over the years, María Callas often had problems with her voice. Critics said some of their actions were not the best. Sometimes, he had to cancel actions. Maybe for that reason, their relations with the officials of the main opera companies were often tense. Although many harmful stories were written about their temperament, people close to it have denied it.
María Callas met Aristotle Onassis in America in 1959, and separated from Meneghini less than a year later. From then on, he embarked on a 10 -year -old tormented adventure with the Greek shipping tycoon that ended when he left her for Jackie Kennedy. Callas suffered more problems with his voice. So she sang less and less. In 1965, he sang in the ‘Tosca’ opera by the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini. She played Floria, an Italian singer. It was a role that she had sung many times. This was the last time it appeared in an opera.
Three years later, Callas ventured young opera singers in teaching. At the beginning of the seventies, he taught twelve classes at the Juilliard School in New York. Terrence McNally wrote a work about María Callas and her opera students called ‘Master Class’.
Already outside the opera theaters, María Callas sang in many cities in Europe, the United States and East Asia between 1974 and 1974. Accompanied with his good friend, the opera singer, Giuseppe Di Stefano. Critics considered it a failure.
María Callas lived the last years of her life in Paris, where she died in 1977, at the age of fifty -three, causing suicide rumors.
His legacy
In expert opinion, María Callas influenced the opera more than any other singer of the twentieth century. It is accepted that she managed to achieve a deeper understanding of the Italian traditional opera. Her beautiful voice and intense feeling increased the impact of every opera that she interpreted. A famous critic wrote about her ‘Callas sees and listens to the poetry of music in the big operas. Others sing notes. She sings the meaning ’.
On the scenario of the Scala, there is a precise place where the famous soprano loved being standing while sanging the most difficult arias. Today this point is still known as the ‘Callas Place’. Opera fans are sure that from that point the sound emanates, generously, for the whole room equally.
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