WORLD 24/03/22 The Art of Maria Callas

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The Art of Maria Callas

Unveiling the legend of Maria Callas, the voice that redefined Italian Opera. Explore her rise to fame, vast repertoire, and enduring impact

Photo of Maria Callas from the television talk show Small World aired in 1958 and hosted by Edward R. Murrow. (Photo: CBS Television / Wikipedia)

By Giovanni Arledler SJ, La Civiltà Cattolica

Published: March 22, 2024 11:14 AM GMT

Updated: March 22, 2024 11:26 AM GMT

To speak of Maria Callas is to recall one of the most important periods in the history of Italian Opera, from the end of World War II to the early 1960s, when generations of performers such as Tebaldi, Simionato, Barbieri, Del Monaco, Di Stefano, Bastianini, Gobbi, and Rossi-Lemeni handed over the baton to Freni, Caballé, Valentini Terrani, Pavarotti, Domingo, Nucci, Bruson and Raimondi, to name but a few.

Maria Callas (b. New York, 1923 – d. Paris, 1977) was born Kalogeropoulos, which reveals her Greek origin. When she was born in New York, her parents had recently moved from Greece, and in the U.S. Maria stayed with her mother and older sister until 1937, when she returned to Greece.

In Athens she attended the Conservatory and graduated in singing, piano and languages.

Even from the beginning, her repertoire was broad in scope. In fact, her debut came with a full performance of Cavalleria Rusticana, on April 2, 1939, when she was only 15 years old. By 1945 Maria had performed seven principal roles and in no less than 57 live concerts.

From 1945 to 1947 she returned to the United States, although she had been advised to go straight to Italy. The early period of the artist’s training is not much studied, despite her making very considerable progress.

Callas subsequently became the famous artist judged by many to be of unsurpassable ability after coming to Italy in 1947, where she strung together a series of exceptional interpretations in operas that cannot usually be approached by a single voice type.

These included Cherubini’s Medea, Verdi’s Macbeth and La Traviata, Bellini’s Norma and La Sonnambula, and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor. 

Callas’ voice

We assumed that everyone knows that Callas had a soprano voice. But it should be acknowledged that hers was a voice of higher than normal range, from the low F-sharp, below the stave, to the high E, according to some to the high F, three octaves above.

Then, in the various registers of her voice one could find distinctive traits, sometimes harsh, that helped her from time to time in dramatic, lyrical and bel canto passages, performances of unmatched virtuosity, which had not been heard since the first half of the nineteenth century from singers such as Maria Malibran and Giuditta Pasta.

Read the complete article here.

This article is brought to you by UCA News in association with "La Civiltà Cattolica."