(Featuring Callas in a glittering selection of opera favou...)
Featuring Callas in a glittering selection of opera favourites by Bizet, Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, Rossini, Verdi and many more, this disc showcases her unique voice and her heartbreaking portrayal of tragic heroines.
(The New Sound of Maria Callas Opera singers come and go, ...)
The New Sound of Maria Callas Opera singers come and go, but just a few – the legends – live on. And Maria Callas was the greatest legend of them all, though not just for the wonder of her voice. She changed the way people thought about opera, but she also became famous as the glamorous celebrity who fell in love with Aristotle Onassis, leaving her elderly husband to live with him on his yacht Christina and enjoy the high life with the international jet set. Of course it ended badly. She lived her life like one of her own tragic heroines who (as women tend to do in opera) sing, suffer and die. And her own death came at just 53, after a dazzling but short career that took in heavy roles alongside decorative, nightingale-like ones – ignoring the established rules of vocal health and probably explaining why her voice finally gave out as it did. But in that time she did extraordinary things, using the muscle of those heavy heroines to empower the nightingales with strength and depth of feeling nobody had thought to offer them before. She gave them credibility as drama. Her performances were absolute and self-exposing: she held nothing back. And she was even tougher on herself than she could be on others – which is why her voice was never quite the flawless instrument singers are meant to cultivate. Her personality was far too volatile and too self-sacrificing in its love affair with risk. In the mythology of opera, though, that’s what the audience demands. We want the diva to be both a goddess and a slave: to give her life for art. We thrill to the dimension of that sacrifice. And Callas dutifully obliged. (Michael White, 2014)
Maria Callas - The Complete Studio Recordings (The Original Jacket Collection)
(This is a deluxe box set including: Each individual item ...)
This is a deluxe box set including: Each individual item (complete opera or recital CD) presented in its original artwork, 136 pages hard-back book containing essays, a biography and chronology, rarely-seen photos and also reproductions of revealing correspondence between Maria Callas, Walter Legge and other EMI executives. Librettos and texts are included on a CD-ROM, and individual albums carry new notes on the specific recording.
Maria Callas, an opera singer, whose career lasted barely twenty years. Her most famous roles included Norma, Lucia, Violetta (La Traviata), Elvira (I Puritani), Tosca, and Lady Macbeth. Callas recorded more than twenty albums for EMI-Angel records and also made recordings for the Seraphim label. Her best recordings date from the early to mid-1950's.
Background
Maria Callas was born on December 2, 1923 in New York City, New York, United States; one of three children of Evangelia Dimitriadu and George Kalogeropoulos, recent immigrants from Meligala, Greece. The family first lived in Astoria, Queens, where Maria's father, who had owned a pharmacy in his native Greece, worked for a drugstore chain; like many immigrants, Maria's father changed his last name to something more easily pronounced by Americans, choosing Callas, and by 1927 he owned his own drugstore in a Greek neighborhood in Manhattan. However, he did not meet with the economic success he had enjoyed in Greece, was forced to give up his store, and thereafter worked as a pharmacist for various drugstore chains. Maria's mother was the daughter of a Greek officer. Although she admired music and the arts, she was not a gifted musician. However, from early on, Evangelia did recognize the musical talents of her two daughters, Cynthia ("Jackie") and Maria. Evangelia was determined that the two girls would be trained for musical careers. She bought records of opera singers and was delighted to hear four-year-old Maria sing along with the arias on these recordings. As the girls grew older, Evangelia became even more determined that they continue their music studies, regardless of personal sacrifice. Eleven-year-old Maria, though shy and awkward, participated in children's contests and sang on radio programs. In one such competition, Maria was awarded second prize by comedian Jack Benny. Unfortunately, Evangelia's ambition for her daughters was the source of many family arguments between her and George. In the 1930's the Great Depression was devastating America. The Callas family suffered financially like many other American families at that time. Evangelia decided that the only way to afford her daughters' musical studies was to send them to Greece.
Despite protests from her husband, Evangelia first sent her older daughter Jackie to Greece for piano studies, and then in 1937 she accompanied Maria to Greece.
Education
Maria auditioned for voice teacher Maria Trivella, who taught at the National Conservatory in Athens; she helped Maria win a scholarship to study voice. The conservatory thought that Maria was sixteen, but she was only thirteen. (The young Maria was overweight. She would battle this image for a number of years, later dropping eighty pounds and generally maintaining a slim physique. ) Two years after her acceptance, she began study with Elvira de Hidalgo, an artist-teacher at the leading conservatory in Athens, the Odeon Athenon.
Career
In 1940, Callas made her professional stage debut at the National Lyric Theater, appearing in the operetta Boccaccio. At the end of World War II, in part because she wished to break away from her mother's control, Callas returned to the United States, where she lived with her father and pursued her operatic career. This trip home, however, was professionally disappointing, so she left for Italy in 1947. On June 29, 1947, Callas met Giovanni Battista Meneghini, a building materials tycoon and multimillionaire who was also an avid opera fan. Meneghini took an active interest in Callas and her musical career. Though he was twenty years older than Callas, they married within the year. Meneghini thereafter served as his wife's manager and agent. Though she remained an American citizen, Callas chose to make Italy her home. Callas made her Italian opera debut singing the title role of La Gioconda at the Verona Arena in August 1947. She went on to sing the parts of Isolde and Turandot in Venice, and Aida in Turin. Critics began to recognize her talents--not only her extraordinary voice, but her emotional interpretations of the parts she sang. In November 1948, Callas made her debut in Florence, singing as Norma for the first time: she would be associated with this role throughout her career, performing Norma ninety times in eight countries. In 1954, Maria Callas finally made her United States debut, singing in Norma with the Chicago Lyric Opera. Two years later she again sang the same role for her Metropolitan Opera debut. Thereafter she performed at all the greatest opera houses of the world: La Scala, Covent Garden, the Paris Opera House, and many more. As Callas gained fame as a prominent opera singer, the media seemed to follow her every move. Newspapers wrote of her "diva" temperament, reporting that she was difficult to work with and prone to temper tantrums. Meneghini disputed her critics, saying that Callas was warranted in the performance demands she made.
Though an accomplished vocalist, possessing a two-and-a-half octave range, she was plagued by many mixed reviews concerning her musical performances--some hailed her as the greatest singer of bel canto opera, while others criticized her voice as flawed, undependable, thin, and "metal-like" in the upper register. Callas's own colleagues were also split regarding her talent. Audiences, however, loved Maria Callas and the aura that seemed to surround her. Callas's every performance was said to command an audience; when singing a role, her charisma was astounding.
Callas took chances with her voice to mesh voice and drama together, unlike other opera singers of her time. Vocal risks as well as fatigue probably contributed to her vocal demise.
She was eventually fired from the Metropolitan Opera because Meneghini constantly demanded more money for his wife's performances, while Callas disagreed with Met manager Rudolf Bing on the selection of operas that she would sing.
In 1965, Callas made her last public opera performance, at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. Thereafter her singing career virtually ended, although Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano joined together to sing in a worldwide tour in 1974; her performances were well received by Callas fans, but panned by the critics. Two years after the death of Ari Onassis, Maria Callas died in Paris of an apparent heart attack. She was only fifty-three.
Achievements
She was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century.
Her revival of forgotten repertoire and her dramatic vocal presentation influenced all opera singers who followed her.
Quotations:
Callas herself was a perfectionist; she stated, "To me the art of music is magnificent and I cannot bear to see it treated in a shabby way. When it is respected I will work hard and always give my best. But if music is treated in a shabby or second best way, I do not want to be associated with it. "
Personality
Her charisma was astounding.
Callas's personal life was constantly sensationalized in the papers. Her disputes with conductors about repertoire and her illnesses, which some claimed were phony, were front-page news. The more prominent she became as a performer, the more the media became interested in both her professional life and her personal life as well.
Connections
Maria was married to Battista Meneghini in 1948. In later years, her long romantic relationship with the Greek shipbuilding tycoon Aristotle Onassis was an ongoing serial dramatized in newspaper society and gossip columns. When Callas fell in love with Onassis, she decided to end her first marriage. The divorce proceedings proved lengthy. Meanwhile Maria Callas lived with Onassis but never married him. For the first time in her life her career became secondary to her personal life.
When Maria became famous, her husband and manager Meneghini demanded for her-- and received--ever larger sums of money. She became rich but Meneghini invested her money and made it difficult for Callas to have access to it. Meanwhile, Callas's mother expected her daughter to share her fortune. Her mother's demands, coupled with bad memories about her mother's arguments with her father and lingering resentment of her mother's dominance caused Callas to become estranged from her mother and her sister, although she consistently sent money weekly to both of them.
Her life with Onassis shifted back and forth between happiness and sadness. She endured verbal humiliation by Onassis in front of others, as well as his philandering with a variety of women. When Onassis married Jacqueline Kennedy, Callas quietly moved to Paris. Later, when his marriage to Kennedy was deteriorating, Onassis resumed his friendship with Callas, now pleading for her to marry him. Maria refused but maintained a relationship. Onassis died in 1975.
