“Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore”
“I lived for art, I lived for love”
- Vissi d’arte – Tosca (Puccini)
Maria Callas is likely the most renowned soprano in opera history. A diva unlike any other, she poured her life and love into her voice, enthralling audiences across continents. It is fitting, then, that Maria Callas’ first and last major performances were of Puccini’s Tosca. Passionate and vulnerable, both the fictional soprano Tosca and the world-renowned Maria possessed extreme talent and love for their work–“Vissi d’arte, I lived for art.”
But both Maria and Tosca’s life would ultimately end in tragic death.
So, as the curtain opened for Maria’s first Tosca, it catapulted her into the spotlight. Years later, the curtain would close to imply her grim fate.
Early Life
Maria Callas was born as Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos on December 2nd, 1923, in Manhattan, New York. Her birth was marked with disappointment: Maria was a girl, while her parents–who had a daughter already–had been hoping for a son. Her mother, in response, refused to look at her for the first four days of her life.
When Maria was merely a toddler, her mother discovered her talent for singing–a talent she would soon exploit. “I was made to sing when I was only five,” Maria would later recall. “I hated it.” The family would soon purchase a piano and a gramophone, introduce opera recordings into the household and put their two young girls in music lessons. Even when the Great Depression hit in 1929, the girls stayed with voice and piano lessons despite the family’s dire financial situation.
As she continued to grow, Maria’s talents began to garner attention. Her mother, Evangelia, recalled that one evening, Maria was singing “La Paloma” near the window. Looking outside, Evangelia noticed that the street below was crowded with neighbors, listening on.
Her familial situation, however, wasn’t so harmonious. In 1937, when Maria was thirteen, Evangelia’s marriage problems peaked. Unable to mend the crumbling relationship, she packed up her two daughters and returned to her home in Athens, Greece. Maria’s life there on would change, but her love for music would stay constant. At sixteen, she would eventually enroll in the Athens Conservatoire under famed coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo. Maria was utterly committed to her artistry. De Hidalgo would later call Maria “a phenomenon,” saying “she would listen to all my students, sopranos, mezzos, tenors … she could do it all.” The most important technique Maria learned during her time with her mentor was the famed ‘bel canto,’ a style which prioritizes the beauty and purity of the voice. This would become one of Maria’s trademarks.
During World War II, Athens underwent brutal occupation by Nazi and Italian forces–by the end of the war, 300,000 Athenains had died of starvation alone. Meanwhile, Maria began to secure secondary roles at the Greek National Opera. She earned a salary for her performances, a necessity for surviving harsh wartime conditions. But her voice wasn’t just a source of income keeping her and her family afloat; it was a saving grace. “She sang for her life,” says Lyndsy Spence, author of Cast a Diva: The Hidden Life of Maria Callas.
And Maria’s voice saved more lives than her own. “Fascist soldiers came to her apartment where she had hidden two British soldiers,” Spence asserted. “Callas sang an aria from Tosca to distract them. The fascists listened and the British soldiers escaped with their lives.” Unfortunately, Maria’s voice alone wasn’t always enough. “Callas resented her mother, who worked as a prostitute during the war, for trying to pimp her out to Nazi soldiers,” said Spence. Their mother-daughter relationship would continue to fracture over the years.
Although a rising star, personal hardships of her life tried to dim her light. But Maria wouldn’t let that happen.
La Divina
Maria made her small career debut in Greece in 1941 as Beatrice in Franz von Suppé’s Boccaccio. Many around her revered her beautiful voice and unique dramatism, and the critics adored her. Critic Spanoudi declared Callas “an extremely dynamic artist possessing the rarest dramatic and musical gifts,” and Evangelos Magkliveras evaluated Callas’s performance for the weekly To Radiophonon: “Kalogeropoulou (Callas’ Greek last name) is one of those God-given talents that one can only marvel at.” In 1942, Maria would have her large-scale debut as the lead role of Tosca, as well as sing the role of Marta in Tiefland at the Olympia Theatre. Over the course of eight years in Greece, she would sing fifty-six performances of seven leading roles.
In 1945, Maria returned to the Americas. She was supposed to sing Turandot for the inauguration of a new opera company in Chicago, but disaster struck when it went bankrupt. Thankfully, all was not lost that night—she had caught the attention of the famed conductor Tullio Serafin, and veteran Italian tenor, Giovanni Zenatello. Zenatello went on to land her the star role in La Gioconda by Ponchielli; in 1947, Maria made her Italian debut with that production.
It was in Italy that she met her first husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini. She was merely twenty-three, while he was fifty-one. “They made a distinctly odd couple, but their attraction was mutual and instantaneous. From that moment, and through the following twelve years, ten of them as husband and wife, Callas and Meneghini remained virtually inseparable,” Peter G. Davis wrote for The New York Times.
Maria’s success flourished in the years that followed. Her great turning point occurred in Venice in 1949, when the soprano set to sing Elvira in I puritani fell ill. Unable to find a replacement, Tullo Serafin told Maria that she would be taking the role in only six days time. When Maria protested that not only was she unfamiliar with the role, but also had three other performances upcoming, he simply told her “I guarantee that you can.” It’s an understatement to say that this role opened doors for her. After her performance of Norma at La Scala in 1955 (her most famed production to date), the entirety of the world knew her name. Outside of Greece, she would put on over five hundred performances to adoring audiences.
What set Maria uniquely apart from other artists of that time was her technique. In every performance, she fully embodied the character, immersed in the story that she was singing. Her ‘bel canto’ technique, characterized by legato phrasing, beautiful tone, and rapid scales, was among the best. But besides her raw talent was her perseverance and hardwork. Jealousy and anger only motivated her to persevere forward. She would practice for hours a day, show up to preliminary rehearsals with the entire opera memorized, practice her movements in front of a mirror for hours, and nitpick every minute detail of her performance. Maria’s ambition of becoming a great singer was all she had, and she held onto it desperately. “My life was my work and my work was my life.”
Behind The Curtain
No superstar’s rise is easy. Every one of them, even those with international acclaim, will be torn to shreds by outlets and journalists trying to generate a sensational story.
Maria was first heckled for her seemingly sour attitude, even in her early years. In Greece, fellow singer Maria Alkeou recalled that the established sopranos Nafsika Galanou and Anna (Zozó) Remmoundou “used to stand in the wings while [Maria] was singing and make remarks about her, muttering, laughing, and pointing their fingers at her.” As she became more established, adversaries only became more emboldened. As a critic for The New York Times described one of her performances in 1956, “Once, her enemies began to heckle as she got to the high notes of her second aria in Traviata…says she [Maria], with savage satisfaction: ‘As long as I hear them stirring and hissing like snakes out there, I know I’m on top. If I heard nothing from my enemies, I’d know I was slipping. I’d know they’re not afraid of me any more.’” Maria likely developed this attitude from her treatment in her early years. Her prima donna attitude was so publicized and popular that it would later earn her the nickname “The Tigress.”
During her rise to fame, her weight stood as a point of contention for the media. As a child, she had been overweight, with some accounts claiming she had been two hundred pounds as only a young teenager. Sensing that it was interfering with her casting and her voice, between 1953 and 1954, Maria lost almost eighty pounds; the rumours began immediately. One sustained that she swallowed a tapeworm, while yet another claimed that she had lost the weight eating Rome’s Panatella Mills “physiologic pasta,” which prompted a swift lawsuit.
Maria’s most infamous scandal was with Aristotle Onassis, a filthy rich Greek-Argentine business magnate, who she turned her affections to in 1959. Prior to this affair, her marriage to Meneghini was deteriorating. In charge of Callas’ finances, Meneghini took much of her earnings, either to pay off debts or hide away in foreign bank accounts. In a private letter, Callas lamented their relationship and Meneghini’s handling of her assets. “My husband is still pestering me after having robbed me of more than half my money by putting everything in his name since we were married,” she wrote. “I was a fool…to trust him.” Meneghini had encouraged her to keep singing to keep his pockets lined.
Hoping to set her career behind her and settle down with a family, Onassis became Maria’s new lover. But Onassis had courted Maria for her status primarily, and kept her singing in the spotlight. And as the years went on, Onassis too became abusive and manipulative. This already fragile relationship came crashing down once and for all in 1968, when Onassis suddenly left Maria for Jackie Kennedy (the two would marry in the same year). The scandal was horrific, and was amplified by the baffling fact that Onassis and Maria continued to see each other until his death in 1975.
The Curtain Falls
Maria’s voice began to deteriorate in the 1960s. When her voice almost cracked singing ‘Casta Diva’ in Norma in Rome in 1958, an audience member shouted, “Why don’t you go back to Milan, you have already cost us a million lire!” In 1962, her voice finally gave way during a performance of Medea at La Scala in 1962. Maria was losing the one thing that defined her entire life.
Although vocal strain and burnout likely played a role in this downturn, she was ultimately suffering from dermatomyositis, a disease that causes failure of the muscles and tissues, including the larynx (an organ crucial to both breathing and singing). According to the neurologist who treated her, she had been dismissed as ‘crazy’ by doctors–as women often were–delaying her treatment.
When Maria finally received her due medical attention, her treatments included corticosteroids and immunosuppressive agents–drugs which can eventually cause heart failure. Unfortunately, Maria had already been struggling with drug use. The habit likely began while she was with Meneghini, with him introducing her to “liquid vitamins” to maintain her schedule, according to Spence. The problem only continued with Onassis; she began taking additional drugs such as pentobarbital for her health problems, dragging her down the slippery slope towards addiction.
When Maria began to cancel shows and recede from the spotlight, critics and fans were maliciously scornful. As Spence writes, “When she sang in Copenhagen, audience members said, “Let’s go home and listen to our Callas records, she’s a shell of herself.” Her prime voice was so heavenly, and her performances had been so flawless, that there was no room for mistakes. In 1965, Maria performed Norma at the Royal Gala Performance, attended by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. When the curtain rose, there was a horrific silence; although she had captivated the audience by the second act, it was clear to Maria that her voice was no longer what it once was. At 41 years old, that would be her last performance on the opera stage.
As the Onassis scandal reached its peak and Maria’s health problems took a turn for the worse, she receded from the public eye. She attempted multiple comebacks during this time, and took up teaching Juilliard masterclasses, but would never again grace the stage in the same way.
On the 16th of September 1977, Callas died of a heart attack, aged fifty three, in her Paris apartment.
Legacy
Maria Callas made an uncontested mark in the world of opera. In her short career, she revived the ‘bel canto’ technique, and brought with it flares of dramatism and emotion that none other could rival. Her ‘Casta Diva’ as Norma was groveling and humble, her Tosca was tragic. Renowned sopranos wouldn’t dare to imitate Maria, with one stating after her performance of Violetta in La Traviata, “What would be the point of doing so if Maria Callas could do it perfectly?” Her characters were her muses, and she poured herself into them, so much so that she became them.
As the years passed and her once-adoring audience began to turn on her, she only embodied her characters more, trying to make sense of her despair. During a performance of Medea at La Scala in 1961, her voice was wavering and the audience began to heckle her. Maria turned to the audience with a raised fist, singing directly at the audience. “Crudel! Ho dato tutto a te! (Cruel man! I gave everything to you!)”
At the end of the performance, she received a standing ovation. Maria gave everything to her craft, and everyone knew it to be true.
Maria Callas made an uncontested mark in the world of opera. In her short career, she revived the ‘bel canto’ technique, and brought with it flares of dramatism and emotion that none other could rival.