Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death of soprano Maria Callas. Throughout her life, Ms. Callas embodied the concept of the Prima Donna with her remarkable voice, innate dramatic poise, and fiery, passionate life. Her greatest characterizations were as Bellini's Norma, Puccini's Tosca, Bizet's Carmen, Donizetti's Anne Boleyn, Lucia, Verdi's Lady Macbeth and Violetta.
Although she was born and spent her early childhood in the United States, she became Italian via her profession and her ten year marriage to G.B. Meneghini. In 1937 she and her family went to Greece where she studied at the Athens Conservatory with soprano Elvira de Hidalgo. On August 27, 1942, she stepped in as Tosca opposite the enormous tenor and idol of the Greek operatic world, Antonis Dellendas. This successful debut soon led to other demanding roles including Aida, Turandot, Isolde, Kundry and Brünnhilde. In 1949, she offered another side of her voice by substituting for an ill colleague in the bel canto role of Elvira in Bellini's I Puritani.
Eventually, she gave up the heavier roles and focused on earlier Italian operas playing Bellini's Amina, Donizetti's Lucia and Verdi's Leonora, Violetta and Gilda. She specialized in rare and vocally challenging operas including Haydn's L'Anima del Filosofo, Gluck's Alceste and Iphigénie en Tauride, Cherubini's Médée, etc. She received extraordinary recognition in the major opera houses throughout the world like La Scala, Covent Garden, the Lyric Theatre of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Opera.
Callas was a highly critical perfectionist who experienced frequent vocal problems; this often led to cancellation of engagements and subsequent problems with management. She gradually faded from the vocal scene after her last operatic appearance at Covent Garden on July 5, 1965. Occasionally she appeared on the concert stage and led some masterclasses.
If you have never heard her sing, feel free to check out Carmen with Nicolai Gedda, tenor and Robert Massard, baritone, La Divina Complete, a four CD set of her most famous roles, or Tosca with Giuseppe Di Stefano, tenor, and Tito Gobbi, baritone. Biographies about her include Anne Edwards' Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography, Stelios Galatopoulos' Maria Callas: Sacred Monster, and Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington's Maria Callas, the Woman Behind the Legend.