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LA MAS GRANDE...y no lo digo solo yo... 
MET: The Callas Legacy
Nearly thirty years after her death, Maria Callas’s legend looms larger than ever. JAMES C. WHITSON questions several leading singers about La Divina’s lasting impact.
Callas at the curtain call following her 1956 Met debut
Opera News Archives
Maria Callas figures in popular history variously as the singer who, if not possessed of the greatest voice, managed nonetheless by sheer force of will and talent, to trace a meteoric path into the operatic firmament; the bel canto artist who single-handedly rescued that repertoire from oblivion; and a woman who, almost thirty years after her death, continues to be mourned by many, is still worshipped by some yet remains an enigma to most.
Are we finally far enough removed from her legendary life to assess her art without hyperbole? OPERA NEWS asked ten prominent singers what value they found in her recorded legacy, what inspiration they drew from her characterizations and what lessons they took from her career.
APRILE MILLO
Listening to Callas is like reading Shakespeare: you’re always going to be knocked senseless by some incredible insight into humanity. She is a huge bonfire! The thread, the “inner serpent” that she would get in certain music was so complete — for example, in the Lucia recording, the phrase “Alfin, son tua.” Lucia, at her absolute happiest moment, would have said to Edgardo, “I am finally yours.” For me, the woman Lucia came to life in that moment, and I understood why she was out of her mind, you know? You’ve got it all in that one phrase.
In my mind, she and Ponselle were very close in the way they approached Norma, with different sound effect. But Callas gave it a humanity that had never been explored before, especially the last act, which [is] devastating and triumphant at the same time. And in a style that is not Mozart — which she sang with an energy and passion not associated with his music these days. But when she sang bel canto, there was a different, informed melancholy, which is totally right for the period.
When I was very young, Callas literally taught me Trovatore, because at that time I didn’t read music, so I wanted to make sure that I listened to someone who was very structured and precise. I remember listening to the Karajan recording religiously. When I sang Leonora, I remember Zinka Milanov herself, sitting in the first row with a little beehive, saying, “My goodness, you’re like a young me,” and I thought, “If you only knew.”
MARTINA ARROYO
What we thought was great acting fifty years ago is considered a bit out-of-date today. Now, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good then, that something didn’t happen. What Callas did was extremely new and rewarding, [and] very different from what we had been used to, which was usually the “traffic cop.”
I adored this lady, and I respected her work ethic. She always wanted to improve her understanding of a piece. “Casta Diva,” [for instance] — what interested me most was how she gave the runs and the cadenzas words. That always floored me. I always felt I heard her saying something — it was never just singing notes. That alone is an art. It’s an art that you can try to achieve, but you can’t copy, because that’s just imitating without delving into [how she felt] about that particular fioritura.
When she sang a phrase with great drama [and went] into a chest voice, I thought, “My God, that’s wonderful,” because it made so much sense of the text, but afterwards I thought, “Don’t you dare go there! It’s just not healthy.” I’ve heard her sing the same lines in that area of the voice when she was younger, and [she wouldn’t] “go chest” at all. That’s when you say, “This is very beautiful, but that was exciting.” It’s certainly more interesting with the chest, [but] the technique can be ruined, if that technique doesn’t constantly work at bringing it back to the beautiful. If you do the exciting stuff often enough, it becomes your way of singing, because your physical memory takes your voice there.
But how many other artists since Callas have you heard and thought, “She sang gorgeously, but I never cried”?
CARLO BERGONZI
With Callas, I had two wonderful opportunities — one at the Met [Lucia di Lammermoor, 1958]. She stayed backstage to listen to my last act and then said to me that no one had sung that act like Bergonzi. The other [was] Tosca, and she asked for me specifically to sing with her on the Prêtre recording. These were great experiences. I found her to be extremely affabile, very kind, and when she found an equal partner, she was very, very happy.
Callas studied the text, the meaning of the words, and as a result, she became a diva. She became the Great Callas. Because she studied the character, she entered the mind of the character, and she brought the character to life onstage. Today, young singers don’t have this mindset. They don’t have the kind of technique that Callas had. No one breathes from the diaphragm in order to sing — they’re not being taught! That’s the trouble! Because it’s so important to know how to sing on the breath — if there’s no one teaching technique today, we will have a time in the not-too-distant future when there won’t be any opera!
Price, Milanov and Tebaldi had stupendous voices and great careers. [But] Callas, as a performer, as someone who expressed the real meaning of the words, was the best. The best. There is no doubt about this — not only for her sound, but because she studied so much. Callas is the diva. She is important to young singers, because she was a serious singer onstage, and she left a great legacy. I don’t know, though, if they can listen and learn from what she left on her recordings.
[size=9]At La Scala, 1955, with Cesare Valletti, Luchino Visconti and Leonard Bernstein, her
colleagues for La Sonnambula
Angel Records/Opera News Archives[/size]
CATHERINE MALFITANOIn all her recordings, one witnesses this incredible technique at work, whether it is Puritani, Sonnambula, Lucia, Norma or Abduction, [or] turning around to sing Gioconda and Kundry. This ability to devour all of vocal music history, and take it into herself and spew out such excellent examples of all these different styles — you just think, “How is a voice able to encompass all of this?” Well, it’s not the voice, it’s the woman behind the voice.
No coloratura or fioritura was ever done for its own sake — it was always at the service of some expressive challenge. Her runs always gave the impression of being done so effortlessly. I liken it to the greatest ballerinas — they never made you aware of how painful it is to be en pointe. Callas transcended and transformed pain and difficulty into sheer weightlessness and ease and joy. It’s absolute perfection in itself, and then on top of that she overlays expression — that’s the thing I adored about this singer. She must have spent hours, days, weeks, years on this art, you know? The one I’m floored by is the Entführung that she did. [“Martern aller Arten”] is just beyond belief. I don’t think anyone has sung it better. I mean, how fabulous would it have been for her to do Vitellia in Clemenza di Tito?
There was some wonderful demonic thing that worked inside of her to fuse the elements of technique and expression and transcend the [roles she assayed.] But I think she burned herself up in her own pursuit to grab and embrace life, to taste everything. I don’t think anyone can survive that kind of drive. She’s an inspiration to everyone that follows her, but she’s also a kind of cautionary tale for artists, so they understand that you risk a great deal when you’re that hungry.
ANNA MOFFO
The Bohème [recording I made] at La Scala with Callas was a really wonderful experience. She was a fine musician, and she never wanted anything to be the least bit incorrect. [When] we did the third act, I remember she didn’t like her “Addio,” so she did it twenty-four times! One after another — not the whole aria, but most of it. She confirmed what I thought was an ideal approach to music: she was always right on the tone, [and] she was meticulous about agility. As a result of the recording, we became good friends. She was never friends with another soprano, and I attribute that to the fact that I was absolutely no threat to her [laughs].
When she was at Covent Garden for that famous run of Toscas, I was there singing Gilda with Solti. I was [visiting her] in her dressing room [on my night off] when she grabbed my wrist and squeezed it so hard I thought she’d stop my circulation. She said, “You don’t know yet — you don’t understand. I can’t do any more than I’m doing, but they always want more from me. I can’t — I can’t give any more.”
When you’re a singer, you think you’re always competing with the person who hasn’t come around the corner yet. That’s not true. You’re only competing with yourself. I know because it happened to me. Every time you have a successful record, you say, “I don’t know if I can do it that perfectly tonight.” I think it was very difficult for her at the end of her career, because she was always so perfect, [and] I really think she suffered, because she knew — she knew everything that was out of place.
EVELYN LEAR
The Chicago Lucia [1954], which I witnessed, absolutely blew everybody’s mind, because she stopped the show in the middle of the mad scene. She bowed, [while] the audience went wild, and kept that pose for fourteen minutes. Callas was our lesson, in those days, for how one performed. She had such complete… we say in German “souveränität” — being above everything. She had this aura of magic. People were always mystified by what she did.
Tebaldi had a much more beautiful voice and didn’t have that hollow, breathy sound, which at times was just plain ugly. [But] Callas was unusual because despite the sound of her voice, the force of her personality just magnetized people. It was so present, it came across the footlights at you, that ferocity of hers. It was just all-encompassing. Callas brought the personality, the drama, the magic, the surreal quality to the bel canto roles that Sutherland never did. But Sutherland sang the shit out of them.
Seeing her was far more important than hearing her. She gave a concert in Hamburg [1962] when I was there making a video of La Bohème (in German, of all things). She had lost an enormous amount of weight, and the voice had this terrible wobble, [but] she was such a mistress of what she did, she never let on any discomfort to the audience. I sat there with tears rolling down my cheeks. I’ll never forget that. She sang aria after aria, looked gorgeous, and I thought, “It’s not the same Callas.” But they went mad over her. I cried because I was unhappy for her, because of her voice, but I rejoiced with her about her success.
JON VICKERS
I adored her, but I’m not interested in listening to her recordings. Callas cannot be contained on a recording!
The only opera I ever sang with her was Medea. Many believe that Norma was her greatest role, some say Tosca, but it was Medea. She was born to sing this role. At one of the performances at La Scala, Maria was not well. At the end of her career, the upper register of her voice developed a vibrato, [and] when she was not well it was exaggerated. In the love duet she went up to a high note, and it went badly for her. Many in the audience booed. Her next lines were, “Didn’t I sacrifice my own mother for you, didn’t I sacrifice my own father for you?” And then she turned away from me on the stage, looked straight out into the auditorium, spread open her arms and [sang], “I sacrificed it all, and instead gave everything to you!” You could have heard a pin drop — the tension was incredible! When the curtain came down, the place exploded with cheers, and they were all shouting her name. As we took our bow, she kept saying to me, “Aren’t they terrible, Jon, aren’t they terrible?!”
To work with her, you had to really understand how she saw your role, not how you saw it. She had a very clear-cut understanding of her role, and you had to fit into that interpretation. She was so great, [yet] she could not distance herself from a role. It was actually quite terrifying — she would at times actually cry while singing! You must only portray the emotions, not become personally involved. But Maria always became the role. She was such a servant of the text and the composer, she would tear her voice to ribbons to accomplish it!
RENÉE FLEMING
I love her 1955 La Scala Traviata with Giulini. That recording kind of has it all, for me, and I think my favorite moment in the role comes from her recording of “Dite alla giovine.” There is something intrinsic in her sound that is sad. She’s the epitome of a chiaroscuro voice — the light and the darkness, but more darkness. Her studio recording of Traviata just pales in comparison.
I have a theory about what caused her vocal decline, but it’s more from watching her sing than from listening. I really think it was her weight loss that was so dramatic and so quick. It’s not the weight loss per se — you know, Deborah Voigt has lost a lot of weight and still sounds glorious. But if one uses the weight for support, and then it’s suddenly gone and one doesn’t develop another musculature for support, it can be very hard on the voice. And you can’t estimate the toll that emotional turmoil will take as well. I was told, by somebody who knew her well, that the way Callas held her arms to her solar plexus [allowed her] to push and create some kind of support. If she were a soubrette, it would never have been an issue. But she was singing the most difficult repertoire, the stuff that requires the most stamina, the most strength.
CAROL VANESS
There are some very ugly things about Norma — you know, she’s too violent, and vocally, it runs the edge. Callas gave her heart and soul absolutely more than anyone, and if you become who Norma is, it doesn’t make for pretty singing. It’s not like a Violetta, where you can rest between the acts, and you know, as upset as you might be, her character is still French — it’s not crude and primitive the way Norma is.
She chose to do some mezzo stuff toward the end of her career, but I think she was much more attached to the characters she sang [than the voice type]. I mean, she was drawn less to the range of Carmen than to the actual character. And, let’s face it, Eboli is more interesting than Elizabeth. You know, I like Elizabeth [laughs] — it’s a beautiful character -— but it doesn’t compare with the drama of “O don fatale.”
The old pirates of her Mozart concert arias are really amazing, because it’s so different from her career onstage — her dramatic thinking [about his music] was so far ahead of her time. Of the roles she didn’t perform, I think she might have done very well as Elettra in Idomeneo. It’s got the incredible coloratura of the middle act and the very high thing with the chorus, which requires a very beautiful bel canto line. The last aria, “D’Oreste, d’Aiace,” would have been amazingly dramatic. Those are the things she did incredibly well — she mixed bel canto with big emotion.
EWA PODLES
When I was around thirteen, fourteen years old, in communist Poland, we had no recordings at all. I don’t know how my mother found this old-fashioned recording, with Maria Callas, Tito Gobbi — you know, it was Tosca. I had only this one recording in my house, and I was listening to [it] ten times a day. I knew by heart everything — I could sing Cavaradossi, Tosca, Scarpia — each role. I was very young, and I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do in my life. And when I for the first time heard Maria Callas, suddenly I got proof — “Yes, I want to be a singer, I want to sing like she sings!”
It’s enough to hear her, I’m positive! Because she could say everything only with her voice! I can imagine everything, I can see everything in front of my eye.
People are funny, because they can’t be happy. If they have somebody like Maria Callas in front of them, they always try to find something wrong, something bad, a few mistakes, you know? And maybe she had three voices, maybe she had three ranges, I don’t know — I am professional singer. Nothing disturbed me, nothing! I bought everything that she offered me. Why? Because all of her voices, her registers, she used how they should be used — just to tell us something! She had a message for us, a fantastic message. She had such a big power, and then she just disappeared.
JAMES C. WHITSON is an architect based in Seattle.
The author wishes to thank Bob Kingston for conducting and translating the Carlo Bergonzi interview.
más afotos (y el artículo, claro) ...here... http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/issue/article.aspx?id=1376&issueID=53
_________________
AUPA WOLFIE!!!...esto ya lo había dicho, no?
Fantinetta, hoy mismo
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