Maria Callas was aa American-born Greek soprano and one of the most famous singers in the world.
Her tumultuous life and career has made lots of headlines and still to the day intrigues the general public. So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about her life and career.
- Maria Callas was an American-born Greek soprano
- She was born on December 2, 1923
- She died on September 16, 1977
- She was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century
- Many critics praised her bel canto technique, wide-ranging voice and dramatic interpretations
- Her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini
- And, further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini
- In her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner
- Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina
- She was born in Manhattan to Greek immigrant parents
- She was raised by an overbearing mother who had wanted a son
- Maria received her musical education in Greece at age 13
- She later established her career in Italy
- Forced to deal with the exigencies of 1940s wartime poverty and with near-sightedness that left her nearly blind onstage
- She endured struggles and scandal over the course of her career
- She turned herself from a heavy woman into a svelte and glamorous one after a mid-career weight loss
- This might have contributed to her vocal decline and the premature end of her career
- The press exulted in publicizing Callas’s temperamental behavior, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi and her love affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis
- Although her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press
- Her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her “the Bible of opera”
- Her influence is so enduring that, in 2006, Opera News wrote of her: “Nearly thirty years after her death, she’s still the definition of the diva as artist – and still one of classical music’s best-selling vocalists”
- The name on Callas’s New York birth certificate is Sophie Cecilia Kalos
- She was born at Flower Hospital, 1249 5th Avenue, Manhattan, on December 2, 1923
- It is now called the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center
- Her parents were George Kalogeropoulos and Elmina Evangelia “Litsa”
- She was christened Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos
- Callas’s father had shortened the surname Kalogeropoulos first to “Kalos”
- And subsequently to “Callas” to make it more manageable
- After several appearances as a student, Callas began appearing in secondary roles at the Greek National Opera
- De Hidalgo was instrumental in securing roles for her
- Allowing Callas to earn a small salary, which helped her and her family get through the difficult war years
- After returning to the United States and reuniting with her father in September 1945, Callas made the round of auditions
- In December of that year, she auditioned for Edward Johnson, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera
- Callas maintained that the Met offered her Madama Butterfly and Fidelio, to be performed in Philadelphia and sung in English, both of which she declined
- Feeling she was too fat for Butterfly and did not like the idea of opera in English
- Callas’s voice was and remains controversial
- It bothered and disturbed as many as it thrilled and inspired
- Walter Legge stated that Callas possessed that most essential ingredient for a great singer: an instantly recognizable voice
- The latter half of Callas’s career was marked by a number of scandals
- Following a performance of Madama Butterfly in Chicago in 1955, Callas was confronted by a process server who handed her papers about a lawsuit brought by Eddy Bagarozy, who claimed he was her agent
- Callas was photographed with her mouth turned in a furious snarl
- The photo was sent around the world and gave rise to the myth of Callas as a temperamental prima donna and a “Tigress”
- In the same year, just before her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, Time ran a damaging cover story about Callas, with special attention paid to her difficult relationship with her mother and some unpleasant exchanges between the two
- From October 1971 to March 1972, Callas gave a series of master classes at the Juilliard School in New York
- These classes later formed the basis of Terrence McNally’s 1995 play Master Class
- Callas staged a series of joint recitals in Europe in 1973 and in the U.S., South Korea, and Japan in 1974 with the tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano
- Critically, this was a musical disaster owing to both performers’ worn-out voices
- However, the tour was an enormous popular success
- Audiences thronged to hear the two performers, who had so often appeared together in their prime
- Her final public performance was on November 11, 1974, in Sapporo, Japan
- In 1957, while still married to husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini, Callas was introduced to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis at a party given in her honor by Elsa Maxwell after a performance in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena
- The affair that followed received much publicity in the popular press
- In November 1959, Callas left her husband
- According to one of her biographers, Nicholas Gage, Callas and Onassis had a child, a boy, who died hours after he was born on March 30, 1960
- In his book about his wife, Meneghini states categorically that Maria Callas was unable to bear children
- Various sources also dismiss Gage’s claim, as they note that the birth certificates Gage used to prove this “secret child” were issued in 1998, twenty-one years after Callas’s death
- Still other sources claim that Callas had at least one abortion while involved with Onassis
- In 1966, Callas renounced her U.S. citizenship at the American Embassy in Paris, to facilitate the end of her marriage to Meneghini
- This was because after her renunciation, she was only a Greek citizen, and under Greek law a Greek could only legally marry in a Greek Orthodox church
- As she had married in a Roman Catholic church, this divorced her in every country except Italy
- The renunciation also helped her finances, as she no longer had to pay U.S. taxes on her income
- The relationship ended two years later in 1968, when Onassis left Callas in favor of Jacqueline Kennedy
- However, the Onassis family’s private secretary, Kiki, writes in her memoir that even while Aristotle was with Jackie, he frequently met with Maria in Paris
- There they resumed what had now become a clandestine affair
- Callas spent her last years living largely in isolation in Paris
- She died of a heart attack at age 53 on September 16, 1977
- A funerary liturgy was held at St. Stephen’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral on rue Georges-Bizet, Paris on September 20, 1977
- She was later cremated at the Père Lachaise Cemetery and her ashes were placed in the columbarium there
- After being stolen and later recovered, they were scattered over the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Greece
- According to her wish, in the spring of 1979
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