![]() "Fidelio." "Fidelio" was to have been sung in English. She was offered the title roles in Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" and Beethoven's She auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera at the time that Edward Johnson was the general manager. Even as a child her willpowerīefore she was 15, the student was singing the dramatic role of Santuzza in Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana." Four years later she made her official debut with the Athens Opera.Īt the end of World War II, she went back to New York on her own. She would want to sing the most difficult coloraturas, scales and trills. She remembered Maria as being "squareĪnd fat, but she put such force, such sentiment, such wonderful interpretation into all she sang. She won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where one of her teachers was Elvira de Hidalgo, a famous Spanish soprano in her day. The soprano spoke often of her unhappy childhood, which was marred by the squabbles between her parents and her jealousy of her older sister-Maria was squat, while her sister was attractive and favored by the parents. She attended Public School 164 at Wadsworth Avenue andġ64th Street in Washington Heights, and by the age of 9 was singing for her schoolmates. Rumor that she had been born in Brooklyn, Miss Callas said that she remembered living in Upper Manhattan over a drugstore owned by her father. 3, 1923 in Manhattan's Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals, her Greek parents had arrived in the United States a few months earlier. Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulos was born Dec. When she learned the difficult part of Elvira in Bellini's "I Puritani" in five days in order to substitute for an ailing singer. Her own interest in bel canto grew in 1948 in Venice, Early in her career she sang as many as 16 roles in one season, and she was a quick study. When the soprano was told that she was considered temperamental, her answer was, "I will always be as difficult as necessary to achieve the best." Everyone who worked with her agreed that she was a hard worker, willing to rehearse more thanĮxpected, even when a role or a production was not new. It opened up a whole new repertory for singers such as Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills to follow the path set by Miss Callas. Miss Callas showed that they could be sung, that the melodies and all the embellishments that were thought to beįor virtuoso display could be turned to genuine dramatic use. ![]() Were considered too difficult and too uninteresting musically to be worth reviving. These were the words of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini, most of which had not been heard since the era when they were written. ![]() There is no question that Miss Callas sparked new interest in the largely forgotten bel canto operas of the 19th century. She was a woman in love, a tiger cat, a woman possessed by jealousy. Everything at her command was put into striking use. "But if you look for voice and vocal splendor in your Tosca, MissĬallas is not the one to make you happy."Įarlier in the review he had written that "her conception of the role was electrical. "If you want brains, an awesome stage projection, intensity and musicianship, Miss Callas can supply those commodities more than any soprano around," Mr. Schonberg, the music critic of The New York Times, after her return to the Metropolitan Opera in 1965 in the title role of Puccini's "Tosca." Yet there was no denying that it was the magic of her personality that made every move of hers newsworthy.Ī balanced reaction to Miss Callas's artistry was expressed by Harold C. Her private life was seldom out of the limelight. Opera singers of all time, while others believed that her vocal inadequacies precluded any such claim.ĭisputes and legal action seemed to arise wherever she sang. Those who admired her felt that she was one of the greatest Controversy, legend and myth surrounded the soprano throughout the major part of her career. ![]() She once said, "Wherever I am, it is hectic." This may even have been an understatement. Miss Callas had told some friends this summer that she was concerned about her health, but other associates reported that she had been in perfect health and was preparing to write her autobiography for a New York publisher. Maria Callas, the soprano whose intensely dramatic portrayals made her the most exciting opera singer of her time, died of a heart attack yesterday at her home in Paris. SeptemOBITUARY Maria Callas, 53, Is Dead of Heart Attack in Paris By RAYMOND ERICSON Newspaper in Education (NIE) Teacher Resources Maria Callas, 53, Is Dead of Heart Attack in Paris
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