Maria Callas

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Maria Callas (1958)

Maria Callas (actually Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou , Greek Μαρία Άννα Σοφία Καικιλία Καλογεροπούλου ; * December 2, 1923 in New York City ; † September 16, 1977 in Paris ) was a Greek - American opera singer . She was one of the most important sopranos of the 20th century.

Live and act

The house in Athens where Callas lived from 1937 to 1945.

Maria Callas was born on December 2, 1923 in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York as the daughter of the Greek immigrants George Kalogeropoulos and Evangelia Dimitriadou. The Peloponnese father changed his family name to Callas in 1929 when he opened a pharmacy in the Greek quarter of Manhattan . In 1937, after the divorce of her parents, Maria went to Athens with her mother and sister Yakynthy (Jackie) . She made her first public appearance in November 1938 in Cavalleria rusticana in Athens, when she was still studying with Maria Trivella at the Athens Conservatory . From 1938 she studied singing with Elvira de Hidalgo , also at the Athens Conservatory. In August 1942 she sang the role of Tosca for the first time at the Athens National Opera , and in April 1944 the role of Marta in Tiefland for the first time . Callas took on the title role at the Greek premiere of Fidelio in the theater of Herodes Atticus in August 1944. In 1949 she married the Italian entrepreneur Giovanni Battista Meneghini and took Italian citizenship .

Callas appeared in many roles. Her repertoire included 43 complete roles as well as arias from a further 34 operas. Her vocal range ranged from f sharp in Verdi's Sicilian Vespers to f 3 in Rossini's Armida . In addition to the range of almost three octaves, her voice was extremely flexible. Callas mastered all of the vocal sound techniques used in bel canto singing. In 1951 she appeared as Aida in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. Deviating from the score, she concluded the end of the winning scene in Act 2 with a crystal clear E-flat 3 . “The audience went crazy,” the record company EMI described the reaction. The historical recording has been preserved and was released on CD by EMI in the 1990s as Aida Live 1951 .

Her best-known interpretations include Luigi Cherubini's Medea , Violetta in Verdi's La traviata (1951 ff.) And Bellini's Norma (1948 ff.). Constanze from The Abduction from the Seraglio (1952) is the only Mozart part she portrays . Her merit lies among other things in the interpretation and performance of bel canto operas by Rossini , Donizetti and Bellini . Her appearances in Rossini's Il turco in Italia and Armida , Donizetti's Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor and Bellini's Norma and Il pirata paved the way for singers like Joan Sutherland and Montserrat Caballé , who became known years later in these roles.

In July 1959 Callas was introduced to Aristotle Onassis through Elsa Maxwell and shortly thereafter began a love affair with the Greek billionaire, which led to her marriage to Giovanni Battista Meneghini in 1959 and Onassis' divorce from his then wife Athina Livanos in 1960 . Even after Onassis' marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy , he and "the Callas" were seen repeatedly in public in the 1970s. In 1969 Callas played the role of Medea in Pier Paolo Pasolini 's film of the same name . From 1971 to 1972 she temporarily taught selected master classes at the Juilliard School in New York. Together with her former musical partner Giuseppe Di Stefano tried Callas a comeback in several recital - tours .

Memorial plaque on the urn grave of Callas in the Père Lachaise cemetery

Maria Callas died of a heart attack on September 16, 1977 at the age of 53 in Paris at 36 avenue Georges-Mandel . The funeral service according to the Byzantine rite took place on September 20, 1977 in the Greek Orthodox Cathedral Saint-Etienne in Paris. Among the mourners were Princess Grace of Monaco , Princess Caroline , the baritone Tito Gobbi and the film producer Franco Rossellini . Following her request, her body was cremated and the ashes scattered off the Greek island of Skorpios in the Ionian Sea . There is a symbolic urn grave in the columbarium of the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris .

reception

Callas left an important musical legacy. From 1952 until her departure from the opera stage with the Tosca performance on July 5, 1965 at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, she recorded many of her major roles on vinyl exclusively for EMI . Her recording of Tosca with Giuseppe Di Stefano and Tito Gobbi as partners under Victor de Sabata is still regarded today as one of the best opera recordings ever. In total there are over a dozen studio recordings of various operas. There are also live recordings of operas and several recitals. Callas is seen as the unmatched “ prima donna assoluta ” of the 20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s, their primacy was not undisputed. Some media and opera lovers, especially in Italy, preferred the almost two years older Italian Renata Tebaldi , who could not keep up with Maria Callas in terms of vocal volume, expressiveness and singing technique, but had a more pleasant, warmer voice, with Callas as "tigress" and Tebaldi as " Angel ”or“ dove ”were apostrophized.

“The other example is of course the Medea Cherubinis (let's take the Scala performance under Leonard Bernstein in 1953). When Callas enters the prepared battlefield of the third act ("Numi, venite a me, inferni dei!"), We learn as stunned listeners, even if we were not spectators, what it means to be in the opera of the 18th and early 19th centuries To sing recitatives in the 20th century , and if she had only left this recitative and the one that precedes the finale, that alone would make her one of the greatest phenomena of dramatic singing of all time [...]
I am not inclined to exaggerate, but I have to defend myself Confess to the uncritical disgrace of Callas that there is nothing more breathtaking in the history of the recording of human song than this third act of Medea . Someone was singing for his life here, and if the Callas had been carried off the stage dead after that evening, I wouldn't be surprised. That is a self-renunciation, that is vocal madness to a degree that silences any criticism, indeed makes any professional judgment appear irrelevant. You just can't sing like that, you can't burn yourself on stage like that, as a listener you might object, but you can't get a word out. The poison that Medea Glauce enters with her diadem and robe at the same time gnaws at the vocal cords of her interpreter, and the god of song, if there is one, has not graciously accepted the sacrifice that was made to him. "

- Jens Malte Fischer : Great voices

Special postage stamp, commemorative coin and advertising

The rose 'Maria-Callas' ( Meilland , 1965)
  • 1980, May 5th, Greek Post : EUROPE - Important personalities, 14 drachma special postage stamp. Michel 1412.
  • 2007 Greece: 10 euro commemorative coin, silver 925 fine, weight 9.75 g, on the 30th anniversary of her death. Edition: 5000 pieces. Krause and Mishler 224.
  • Some streets and squares are named after Callas, including Largo Maria Callas in Milan
  • Callas is recognized in Apple's “ Think Different ” campaign .
  • A rose variety introduced by Marie-Louise Meilland in 1965 bears the name Maria Callas (syn. 'Miss All American Beauty')

Selected discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Bizet: Carmen
  US 87 03/27/1965 (8 weeks)
The Maria Callas Collection
  UK 50 06/20/1987 (7 weeks)
Diva - The Ultimate Collection
  UK 61 02/24/1996 (1 week)
Prima donna assoluta
  DE 71 09/29/1997 (2 weeks)
Popular Music from TV, Film & Opera
  UK 45 
gold
gold
11/11/2000 (8 weeks)
Maria Callas
  DE 80 12/18/2000 (3 weeks)
  AT 34 12/10/2000 (8 weeks)
Romantic callas
  AT 34 11/18/2001 (9 weeks)
  UK 32 
gold
gold
10/27/2001 (3 weeks)
The Passion of Callas
  AT 28 10/19/2003 (6 weeks)
The Complete Studio Recordings
  DE 99 03/10/2014 (1 week)
Pure
  UK 88 04/10/2014 (1 week)
Remastered Live Recordings 1949-1964
  DE 74 09/22/2017 (1 week)

Only recordings that have been released on CD are listed.

Film and television recordings with Maria Callas

Only a few appearances of Callas are documented as film, for example excerpts from Tosca from November 25, 1956 in New York (with George London as Scarpia and the NBC orchestra under Dimitri Mitropoulos ), her debut in Paris in 1958, both concerts in Hamburg (1959 and 1962) and concerts at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden (1962 and 1964). There are also very short excerpts from Norma and La traviata as well as the Medea film by Pasolini.

Appearances and roles

Callas performed a total of 540 times in 42 roles on the opera stage from 1949 to 1965, the first time as Santuzza in a student performance of Cavalleria rusticana on April 2, 1939. On a professional stage she sang for the first time in Athens on August 27, 1942 Tosca. In this role she said goodbye to the opera stage in London on June 5, 1965. Concert performances of operas are not included in these lists.

By far the most frequent appearances as Norma (91 times), followed by Violetta (57 times), Lucia (40 times), Tosca (32 times), Medea (29 times), Aida (26 times ), Turandot (24 times), Amina (22 times), Leonora in Trovatore (21 times), Elvira in the Puritani (16 times), La Gioconda and Santuzza (13 times), Isolde (12 times ), Anna Bolena and Elena in I vespri siciliani (11 times).

  • d'Albert : Tiefland - 1944 (6 appearances), 1945 (1 appearance) - (7 in total)
  • Beethoven : Fidelio - 1944 (2)
  • Bellini: Il Pirata - 1958 (6), 1959 (2) - (8)
  • Bellini: La sonnambula - 1955 (10), 1956 (6), 1957 (6) - (22)
  • Bellini: Norma - 1948 (2), 1949 (4), 1950 (14), 1951 (9), 1952 (14), 1953 (12), 1954 (2), 1955 (7), 1956 (9), 1957 (2), 1958 (1), 1960 (2), 1964 (8), 1965 (5) - (91)
  • Bellini: I Puritani - 1949 (3), 1951 (4), 1952 (7), 1955 (2) - (16)
  • Boito : Mefistofele : 1954 (3)
  • Bizet: Carmen - (Studio only)
  • Cherubini: Medea - 1953 (6), 1954 (5), 1955 (5), 1958 (2), 1959 (7), 1961 (2), 1962 (2) - (29)
  • Donizetti: Anna Bolena - 1957 (6), 1958 (5) - (11)
  • Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor - 1952 (3), 1953 (7), 1954 (12), 1955 (2), 1956 (10), 1957 (1), 1958 (3), 1959 (2) - (40)
  • Donizetti: Poliuto - 1960 (5))
  • Giordano : Andrea Chénier - 1955 (6)
  • Giordano: Fedora - 1956 (6)
  • Gluck : Alceste - 1954 (4)
  • Gluck: Iphigénie en Tauride - 1957 (4)
  • Haydn : Orfeo ed Euridice - 1951 (2)
  • Kalomiris : O Protomasteras - 1943 (2), 1944 (2) - (4)
  • Leoncavallo: Pagliacci - (only studio)
  • Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana - 1939 (1), 1944 (12) - (13)
  • Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio - 1952 (4)
  • Ponchielli: La Gioconda - 1947 (5), 1952 (5), 1953 (3) - (13)
  • Puccini: Madame Butterfly - 1955 (3)
  • Puccini: La Bohème - (Studio only)
  • Puccini: Manon Lescaut - (studio only)
  • Puccini: Suor Angelica - 1940 (1), 1943 (1) - (2)
  • Puccini: Tosca - 1942 (1), 1950 (6), 1951 (1), 1952 (1), 1954 (3), 1956 (2), 1958 (2), 1964 (4), 1965 (12) - ( 32)
  • Puccini: Turandot - 1948 (16), 1949 (8) - (24)
  • Rossini: Armida - 1952 (3)
  • Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia - 1956 (5)
  • Rossini: Il Turco in Italia - 1950 (4), 1955 (5) - (9)
  • Spontini: La Vestale - 1954 (5)
  • Soup : Boccaccio - 1941 (2)
  • Verdi: Aida - 1948 (5), 1949 (1), 1950 (13), 1951 (4), 1953 (3) - (26)
  • Verdi: Don Carlos - 1954 (5)
  • Verdi: I Vespri Siciliani - 1951 (10), 1952 (1) - (11)
  • Verdi: Il trovatore - 1950 (3), 1951 (3), 1953 (13), 1955 (2) - (21)
  • Verdi: La forza del destino - 1948 (4), 1954 (2) - (6)
  • Verdi: La Traviata - 1951 (15), 1952 (9), 1953 (5), 1954 (2), 1956 (17), 1958 (11) - (57)
  • Verdi: Macbeth - 1952 (5)
  • Verdi: Nabucco - 1949 (3)
  • Verdi: Rigoletto - 1952 (2)
  • Verdi: Un Ballo in Maschera - 1957 (5)
  • Wagner: Parsifal - 1949 (4), 1950 (2) - (6)
  • Wagner: Tristan and Isolde - 1947 (1), 1948 (6), 1950 (5) - (12)
  • Wagner: The Valkyrie - 1949 (6)

literature

  • John Ardoin: Maria Callas and Her Legacy. Translated from the English by Tilmann Waldraff . Noack-Hübner, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-88453-002-X (original title see below).
  • John Ardoin (Ed.): Maria Callas: My master class. An exercise book for singers with numerous music examples. From the American English by Olaf Matthias Roth. Henschel, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89487-444-9 (transcript of the masterclasses at the New York Juilliard School with 25 singers).
  • Callas. Faces of a medium. With an essay by Attila Csampai and a tribute from Ingeborg Bachmann . Schirmer-Mosel, Munich et al. 1993, ISBN 3-88814-987-8 .
  • Jens Malte Fischer : Big voices. From Enrico Caruso to Jessye Norman (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch. 2484). License issue. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-518-38984-X .
  • Nicholas Gage : Greek fire. Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis. From the American by Ulrike Wasel and Klaus Timmermann. Blessing, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89667-136-7 (original title see below).
  • Stelios Galatopoulos: Maria Callas. The biography. Translated from the English by Manfred Ohl and Hans Sartorius. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-024413-3 .
  • Jürgen Kesting : Maria Callas. Claassen, Düsseldorf 1990, ISBN 3-546-45386-7 .
  • Werner Schroeter : The cardiac death of the prima donna, in DER SPIEGEL 40/1977
  • Ricci Tajani: Maria Callas. The Cruise '59 - biography of a trip. Schott Music, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-7957-0569-X .
  • Gunna Wendt : My voice disturbed people. Diva assoluta Maria Callas. Knaus, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-8135-0237-6 .
  • Gunna Wendt: Maria Callas or The Art of Self-Staging. Henschel, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-89487-537-2 .

in French:

  • Anne Edwards: Maria Callas intime (= J'ai lu. Biography. No. 7731). Traduit de l'anglais by Marie-Claude Elsen. J'ai lu, impr. Paris 2005, ISBN 2-290-33777-3 (original title see below).
  • Jacques Lorcey: L'art de Maria Callas. Éditions Atlantica, Biarritz 1999, ISBN 2-84394-168-7 .
  • Jacques Lorcey: Immortelle Callas. Éditions Séguier, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-84049-348-9 .

in English:

  • John Ardoin: The Callas Legacy. Duckworth, London 1977, ISBN 0-7156-0975-0 .
  • Anne Edwards: Maria Callas. An Intimate Biography. 1st US edition. St. Martin's Press, New York NY 2001, ISBN 0-312-26986-2 .
  • Nicholas Gage: Greek Fire. The Story Of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis. Warner Books, New York NY 2001, ISBN 0-446-61076-3 .
  • Stelios Galatopoulos: Maria Callas. Sacred monster. Simon and Schuster, New York NY 1998, ISBN 0-684-85985-8 .
  • David A. Lowe (Ed.): Callas, As They Saw Her. Ungar Publishing Company, New York NY 1986, ISBN 0-8044-5636-4 .
  • Nicholas Petsalis-Diomidis: The Unknown Callas. The Greek Years (= Opera Biography Series. 14). Amadeus Press, Portland OR 2001, ISBN 1-57467-059-X .
  • Nadia Stancioff: Maria. Callas Remembered. An Intimate Portrait of the Private Callas. EP Dutton, New York NY 1987, ISBN 0-525-24565-0 (German: Callas. Biographie einer Diva. SV International - Schweizer Verlags-Haus, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-7263-6571-0 or (= Bastei- Lübbe-Taschenbuch. 61202). Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1991, ISBN 3-404-61202-7 ).
  • Arianna Stassinopoulos : Maria. Beyond the Callas Legend. Weidenfield & Nicolson, London 1980, ISBN 0-297-77544-8 .
  • Arianna Stassinopoulos: Maria Callas. The Woman Behind the Legend. Simon and Schuster, New York 1981, ISBN 0-671-25583-5 .

Plays

  • Terrence McNally : Master Class . German ( master class ) from Inge Greiffenhagen and Bettina von Leoprechting. The piece and its author received the Tony Award in 1996 .
  • Wolfgang Schukraft: Maria and Callas. World premiere: March 16, 2017 at the Herrlingen Theater.

Filmography

Films with Maria Callas

Films about Maria Callas

Web links

Commons : Maria Callas  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Maria Callas  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arianna Stassinopoulos: Maria. Beyond the Callas Legend. 1980, p. 7 ff.
  2. ^ Arianna Stassinopoulos: Maria. Beyond the Callas Legend. 1980, p. 103.
  3. ^ Arianna Stassinopoulos: Maria. Beyond the Callas Legend. 1980, pp. 181-184.
  4. ↑ Maria Callas, 53, Is Dead of Heart Attack in Paris . In: archive.nytimes.com . Retrieved April 18, 2018. In: The New York Times, September 17, 1977.
  5. ↑ From Lars Wallerang: Legend: Maria Callas - The Greek tragedy . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . September 13, 2007 ( wz.de [accessed February 28, 2017]).
  6. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Maria Callas
  7. ↑ Jens Malte Fischer : Big Voices , JB Metzler 1993 ISBN 3-476-00893-2 , p. 332 ( preview on Google Books ).
  8. ↑ Chart sources: DE1 DE2 AT UK US
  9. ↑ Music Sales Awards: UK
  10. ^ Jürgen Kesting: Maria Callas. 1990, p. 377 ff.
  11. ↑ The Diva of Herrlingen. Performance review. In: Südwest Presse of March 18, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Callas, Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kalogeropoulou, Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia (real name); Καλογεροπούλου, Μαρία (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek-American opera singer (soprano)
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1977
Place of death Paris