Maria

Callas

The Incomparable Callas 

Liner notes by Frank Granville Barker , 1987

The 1950s and 60s represented a golden age of the soprano, one that brought to the opera house such distinguished and highly individual artists as Renata Tebaldi, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Victoria de los Angeles. Yet few opera goers would attempt to deny that the place of honor was held by Maria Callas. She was not only a great dramatic singer, but the most magnetic stage performer of her time. Indeed, ten years after her untimely death, and twenty two years after her last appearance in an operatic role (that of Tosca at Covent Garden in 1965), she continues to dominate much of our thinking about the art of the opera singer. She may have infuriated the managements of many opera houses, but she exerted a magical spell over her audiences and won the unstinted admiration of her colleagues. 

Tito Gobby, who sang in many performances with her, declared: "She was Tosca every second of the performance, the way she moved and sang, the way she listened to colleagues when they sang. Better than Callas we shall never see." Jon Vickers went so far as to link her with Wieland Wagner as being responsible for bringing about the enormous post-war revolution in the approach to opera. And Montserrat Caballe, who has since taken on many roles in Callas's repertoire, summed up her achievement by stating: "She opened a door for all the singers in the world, a door that had been closed. Behind it was sleeping not only great music but great ideas of interpretation." 

This last tribute emphasizes that Callas had in fact restored the balance of voice, drama and expression that had been established by Giuditta Pasta, Maria Malibran and other singers of the 19th century, her mastery of bel canto technique enabling her to bring back neglected Donizetti and Bellini operas into the repertoire and also to give a new dimension to operas composed in later styles. As another fine singer of our time, Renata Scotto, has pointed out, the command of bel canto enhances the singing of Verdi and even of the verismo composers just as it does that of the more delicate and florid style of composers in the bel canto tradition itself.

Two other factors contributed to Callas's unique artistry: her ability to make emotionally and dramatically meaningful those vocal embellishments which so many other singers had reduced to the level of mere circus display; and her gift for interpreting characters by musical and theatrical means that were thoroughly integrated. With her, acting and singing were not different aspects of a performance, functioning side by side; she acted through her voice as well as with her body, so that her Violetta, for example, had a depth that even celebrated French actress Edwige Feuillere could not match as Marguerite in La Dame aux camelias, the by Dumas on which La traviata was based.

Callas was fortunate at the age of 16 to find the teacher Elvira de Hidalgo in Athens. She realized at the outset that her new pupil could be developed as a dramatic soprano d'agilita, that rare dramatic voice capable of being lyric as well as dramatic, with all the flexibility necessary for mastering the most taxing fioriture. From the very beginning, therefore, Callas was well set to enter the field in which she would become without peer. Yet when she made her first professional appearance, just before her 17th birthday, it was in Suppe's operetta Boccaccio, and another year went by before she sang the kind of principal role for which nature and her relentless studies had prepared her, that of the volatile Tosca. Interestingly, she later declared that the role should only be sung by a soprano with a bel canto technique; and, curiously, she confessed that it was never one of her favourite roles, despite her tremendous success in it. Callas the dramatic artist spoke when she declared: "Tosca's 'Vissi d'arte' should be cut from the opera because it stops completely the action of the second act." What other prima donna would wish to give up her only show-stopping aria in an opera?

Then who but Callas, since the time of Lilli Lehmann, has had the versatility to sing within the space of a few days roles so apparently incompatible as Bruenhilde in Die Walkuere and Elvira in I puritani? She performed this feat after her Italian debut at the Verona Arena in the title role of La gioconda under the baton of Tullio Serafin, whose guidance, advice and teaching were to be crucial in the future development of her career. It was he who invited her to Venice to sing Isolda and then introduced her to the great Bellini roles she would make so completely her own. If it was Hidalgo who first realized that Callas would become the supreme soprano d'agilita, it was Serafine who turned hope into reality by preparing and conducting her as Norma and Elvira. Serafin also helped to develop her musicality, as Hidalgo had previously done, though one suspects that she must have been born with an innate musical sensitivity.

It was this musicality which enabled her to bring about a veritable revolution in operatic taste. For decades operas such as Lucia di Lammermoor had been the province of light sopranos who dazzled the canary-fancying public with their flights of brittle fioriture, but who could not invest the characters with any convincing human substance. Callas by contrast revealed Lucia, for example, as a character of genuine dramatic stature, doomed even from her entrance aria, "Regnava nel silenzio", propelled by events inexorably towards the Mad Scene. Her historic Lucia vindicated the opera as a tragic masterpiece and prepared the way for Joan Sutherland to give it a further lease of new-found life. Similarly, her electrifying performances in Anna Bolena, La sonnambula and Il Pirata revealed the forgotten qualities of these operas just as dedicated restoration discloses the true colours of paintings by the old masters.

For London audiences the revelation came in 1952, when Callas presented a Norma they would never forget. In her entrance scene she laid bare every aspect of the character, first as leader of the druids and their prophetess, then as priestess in "Casta Diva", finally, in the cabaletta, as a jealous woman fearful of losing her lover. All this was achieved with a miraculous combination of phrasing, vocal colouring and overwhelming dramatic intensity. These same qualities illuminate her singing of music of all styles an periods, from the classically restrained Gluck od "J'ai perdu mon Eurydice" to the virile Verdy of "Ernani! Ernani, involami" and the melodramatic Ponchielli of "Suicidio!" It was her musicality that allowed her to find the exact style for French opera, so that it is fascinating to study her idiomatic mastery of the arias of the Manons of Massenet and Puccini. We are fortunate that her interpretative genius can be appreciated so fully through her recordings: they preserve for all time a gallery of operatic portrayals without equal in their vivid presence, even though they cannot convey the impact of her stage performances, in which her hand movements and indeed all her gestures had a magic of their own. It is significant that young members of the audiences at her two Festival Hall concerts in London in 1973, who knew her only from her recordings, pressed forward to touch her hand as though she were a goddess. Which, for the opera-going world, she truly was.