On the 100th-year anniversary of Maria Callas’s birth, readers might be surprised to learn that the opera singer was soundly and roundly booed during her first six performances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. She also confessed in interviews that she did not like the sound of her own voice. Others call her “the voice of the century,” or “La Divina.” Yet, perhaps, no artist in operatic history was so controversial.
If we turn to artists of the previous generation, however, we find virtually unanimous agreement: Dramatic soprano Gina Cigna said, “She had great presence, but goodness, she sang with three voices!” Soprano Augusta Oltrabella said, “Why, oh why did she not stick to the coloratura repertoire? In that she was truly sensational, but the rest of the voice was simply manufactured.” Lyric soprano Mafalda Favero: “She was theatrical to a degree, but never touching.” Mezzo-soprano Giulietta Simionato: “I always found her interpretations immensely dramatic but never moving.”
Callas’s Beginnings
Maria Kalogeropoulos, known to us as Maria Callas, born in New York on Dec. 2, 1923, had a great love for music, a formidable intellect, superlative musicianship, and immense dramatic powers. Her voice, although not the most beautiful, was deeply expressive.
Studio recordings reveal that for perhaps five years the young Callas had vocal cords of iron. Her first solo disc, which offered both lyric and dramatic arias (1949) was a stunning success. Her dramatic instinct, deft sense of style, and flawless technique were beyond reproach. The pitch was steady, and the tone spun luminously.
A Sad Decline
However, when one sings too high and too loud too often, or just simply, too often, even iron vocal cords lose their resilience. The pitch begins to waver: An uncontrollable fluctuation between the intended note and the note just below sets in; huskiness appears as beauty disappears; and finally, an inability to sing rapid notes with accuracy.
The decline was swift. In “La Forza del Destino” (1954), “La Boheme” (1956), and “Norma” (1964), one hears progressive vocal deterioration. The pitch begins to oscillate; the louder passages, pushed past their natural capacity lose their initial beauty; and the voice divides itself into three separate voices, known as registers, having no organic connection with each other.
The True Tragedy
It is an unprecedented phenomenon in operatic history that as Maria Callas began her vocal decline, public adulation exponentially increased. She is, perhaps, the first classical performer to become a kind of pop icon, adored for her celebrity, elegant clothes, and beau monde lifestyle more than for her artistry. The noise of sensation gradually deafened listeners to the quality of the music she was making, and Callas herself was one of the few that seemed to notice.The closeness of a television camera reveals aspects of personality unseen in a large theater. The grand gesture cannot disguise the subtle facial expressions that betray Callas’s fear, or discontent with herself, or the radical change in personality seen in the cold glances given to the conductor belying the humble sweetness she shows the viewers.
One cannot help but feel compassion for the 39-year-old artist in Hamburg (1962), or the 51-year-old in Tokyo, who retains only a ghost of a voice, and whose face expresses despair at not being able to reach the artistic heights she so desperately desired. How must she have felt upon hearing ovations from the crowd, while she knew how utterly she had failed.
The singing of Maria Callas was not divine; it had too many flaws. Her acting was formidable, its power astonishing, but opera is about singing—“bel canto,” the beauty of the human voice and what it can express. For an audience to tolerate and even cheer technical failure and breeches of good taste, to disregard the standards of centuries’ old tradition, is a terrible indictment against a public, perhaps a society, who can be persuaded to cheer almost anything.
It is also an indictment against the artist, Maria Callas, who chose wealth and fame over art, and found that art, in its turn, abandoned her.
