Maria Callas () (December 2, 1923September 16, 1977) was an American-born
Greek soprano and one of the most renowned
opera singers of the 20th century. She combined an impressive
bel canto technique, a wide-ranging voice, and great dramatic gifts. An extremely versatile singer, her repertoire ranged from classical
opera seria to the bel canto operas of
Donizetti,
Bellini and
Rossini; further, to the works of
Verdi and
Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of
Wagner. Her remarkable musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as
La Divina.
Born in New York City and raised by an overbearing mother, she received her musical education in Greece and established her career in Italy. Forced to deal with the exigencies of wartime poverty and with myopia that left her nearly blind on stage, she endured struggles and scandal over the course of her career. She turned herself from a heavy woman into a svelte and glamorous one after a mid-career weight loss, which might have contributed to her vocal decline and the premature end of her career. The press exulted in publicizing Callas's allegedly temperamental behavior, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi, and her love affair with Aristotle Onassis. Her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press. However, her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her "The Bible of opera", and her influence so enduring that, in 2006, Opera News wrote of her: "Nearly thirty years after her death, she's still the definition of the diva as artist—and still one of classical music's best-selling vocalists."
Early life
Family life, childhood and move to Greece
According to her birth certificate, Maria Callas was born
Sophia Cecelia Kalos at Flower Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center), at 1249 Fifth Avenue in
Manhattan, on December 2, 1923 to Greek parents George Kalogeropoulos and Evangelia "Litsa" (sometimes "Litza") Dimitriadou, though she was christened
Anna Maria Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou – the genitive of the patronymic Kalogeropoulos – (). Callas's father had shortened the surname Kalogeropoulos first to "Kalos" and subsequently to "Callas" in order to make it more manageable. The marriage continued to deteriorate and in 1937 Evangelia decided to return to Athens with her two daughters.
In 1957, she told Norman Ross, "Children should have a wonderful childhood. I have not had it – I wish I had." On the other hand, biographer Pestalis-Diomidis asserts that it was actually Evangelia's hateful treatment of George in front of their young children which led to resentment and dislike on Callas's part. However, when interviewed by Pierre Desgraupes on the French program L'Invitee Du Dimanche, Callas attributed the development of her chest voice not to Trivella, but to her next teacher, the well-known Spanish coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo.
Callas studied with Trivella for two years before her mother secured another audition at the Athens Conservatoire with de Hidalgo. Callas auditioned with "Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster." De Hidalgo recalled hearing "tempestuous, extravagant cascades of sounds, as yet uncontrolled but full of drama and emotion". Callas herself said that she would go to "the conservatoire at 10 in the morning and leave with the last pupil ... devouring music" for 10 hours a day. When asked by her teacher why she did this, her answer was that even "with the least talented pupil, he can teach you something that you, the most talented, might not be able to do."
Early operatic career in Greece
After several appearances as a student, Callas began appearing in secondary roles at the Greek National Opera. De Hidalgo was instrumental in securing roles for her, allowing Callas to earn a small salary, which would help her and her family get through the difficult war years.
Main operatic career
After returning to the United States and reuniting with her father in September 1945, Callas made the round of auditions. Subsequently he recommended Callas to retired tenor and impresario
Giovanni Zenatello. During her audition, Zenatello became so excited that he jumped up and joined Callas in the Act 4 duet. She was engaged to sing the role of Brünnhilde in
Die Walküre at the
Teatro la Fenice, when
Margherita Carosio, who was engaged to sing Elvira in
I puritani in the same theater, fell ill. Unable to find a replacement for Carosio, Maestro Serafin told Callas that she would be singing Elvira in six days; when Callas protested that she not only did not know the role, but also had three more Brünnhildes to sing, he told her "I guarantee that you can."
Franco Zeffirelli recalled, "What she did in Venice was really incredible. You need to be familiar with opera to realize the enormity of her achievement. It was as if someone asked
Birgit Nilsson, who is famous for her great
Wagnerian voice, to substitute overnight for
Beverly Sills, who is one of the great
coloratura sopranos of our time." and he directed her in lavish new productions of
La vestale,
La traviata,
La sonnambula,
Anna Bolena, and
Iphigénie en Tauride. Callas was notably instrumental in arranging
Franco Corelli's debut at La Scala in 1954, where he sang Licinio in
Spontini's
La vestale opposite Callas's Julia. The two had sung together for the first time the year previously in Rome in a production of
Norma.
Anthony Tommasini wrote that Corelli had "earned great respect from the fearsomely demanding Callas, who in Mr. Corelli finally had someone with whom she could act." The two collaborated several more times at La Scala, singing opposite each other in productions of
Fedora (1956),
Il pirata (1958) and
Poliuto (1960). Their partnership continued throughout the rest of Callas's career.
Callas made her American debut in Chicago in 1954, and "with the Callas Norma, Lyric Opera of Chicago was born." Her Metropolitan Opera debut, opening the Met's seventy-second season on October 29, 1956 was again with Norma, but was preceded with an unflattering cover story in Time magazine which rehashed all of the Callas clichés, including her temper, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi, and especially her difficult relationship with her mother. She further solidified this company's standing when, in 1958, she gave "a towering performance as Violetta in La Traviata and that same year, in her only American performances of Medea, gave an interpretation of the title role worthy of Euripides."
In 1958 a feud with Rudolf Bing led to Callas's Metropolitan Opera contract being cancelled. Impresario Allen Oxenburg realised that this situation provided him with an opportunity to hire Callas for his own company, the American Opera Society, and he accordingly approached Callas with a contract to perform Imogene in Il pirata. She accepted and sang the role in a January 1959 performance that according to opera critic Allan Kozinn "quickly became legendary in operatic circles". Bing and Callas later reconciled their differences and she returned to the house in 1965 to sing the title role in two performances as Tosca opposite Franco Corelli as Cavaradossi for one performance (March 19, 1965) and Richard Tucker (March 25, 1965) with Tito Gobbi as Scarpia for her final performances at the Met.
In 1952, she made her London debut at the Royal Opera House in Norma with veteran mezzo soprano Ebe Stignani as Adalgisa, a performance which survives on record and also features the young Joan Sutherland in the small role of Clotilde. In 1968, Callas told Edward Downes that during her initial performances in Cherubini's Medea in May 1953, she realized that she needed a leaner face and figure to do dramatic justice to this as well as the other roles she was undertaking. She adds,
I was getting so heavy that even my vocalizing was getting heavy. I was tiring myself, I was perspiring too much, and I was really working too hard. And I wasn't really well, as in health; I couldn't move freely. And then I was tired of playing a game, for instance playing this beautiful young woman, and I was heavy and uncomfortable to move around. In any case, it was uncomfortable and I didn't like it. So I felt now if I'm going to do things right—I've studied all my life to put things right musically, so why don't I diet and put myself into a certain condition where I'm presentable. Various rumors spread regarding her weight loss method; one had her swallowing a tapeworm, while Rome's Pantanella Mills pasta company claimed she lost weight by eating their "physiologic pasta", prompting Callas to file a lawsuit. Walter Legge stated that Callas possessed that most essential ingredient for a great singer: an instantly recognizable voice. During "The Callas Debate", Italian critic Rodolfo Celletti stated, "The timbre of Callas's voice, considered purely as sound, was essentially ugly: it was a thin sound, which gave the impression of dryness, of aridity. It lacked those elements which, in a singer's jargon, are described as velvet and varnish... yet I really believe that part of her appeal was precisely due to this fact. Why? Because for all its natural lack of varnish, velvet and richness, this voice could acquire such distinctive colours and timbres as to be unforgettable." However, in his review of Callas's 1951 live recording of I vespri siciliani, Ira Siff writes, "Accepted wisdom tells us that Callas possessed, even early on, a flawed voice, unattractive by conventional standards — an instrument that signaled from the beginning vocal problems to come. Yet listen to her entrance in this performance and one encounters a rich, spinning sound, ravishing by any standard, capable of delicate dynamic nuance. High notes are free of wobble, chest tones unforced, and the middle register displays none of the "bottled" quality that became more and more pronounced as Callas matured."
Nicola Rossi-Lemeni relates that Callas's mentor Tullio Serafin used to refer to her as "Una grande vociaccia"; he continues, "Vociaccia is a little bit pejorative—it means an ugly voice—but grande means a big voice, a great voice. A great ugly voice, in a way." Callas herself did not like the sound of her own voice; in one of her last interviews, answering whether or not she was able to listen to her own voice, she replies,
Yes, but I don't like it. I have to do it, but I don't like it at all because I don't like the kind of voice I have. I really hate listening to myself! The first time I listened to a recording of my singing was when we were recording San Giovanni Battista by Stradella in a church in Perugia in 1949. They made me listen to the tape and I cried my eyes out. I wanted to stop everything, to give up singing... Also now even though I don't like my voice, I've become able to accept it and to be detached and objective about it so I can say, "Oh, that was really well sung," or "It was nearly perfect."
Maestro Carlo Maria Giulini has described the appeal of Callas's voice:
It is very difficult to speak of the voice of Callas. Her voice was a very special instrument. Something happens sometimes with string instruments—violin, viola, cello—where the first moment you listen to the sound of this instrument, the first feeling is a bit strange sometimes. But after just a few minutes, when you get used to, when you become friends with this kind of sound, then the sound becomes a magical quality. This was Callas. On the other hand, music critic John Ardoin has argued that Callas was the reincarnation of the nineteenth century soprano sfogato or "unlimited soprano", a throwback to Maria Malibran and Giuditta Pasta, for whom many of the famous bel canto operas were written. He avers that like Pasta and Malibran, Callas was a natural mezzo-soprano whose range was extended through training and willpower, resulting in a voice which "lacked the homogeneous color and evenness of scale once so prized in singing. There were unruly sections of their voices never fully under control. Many who heard Pasta, for example, remarked that her uppermost notes seemed produced by ventriloquism, a charge which would later be made against Callas".
Vocal size and range
Regarding the sheer size of Callas's instrument, Celletti says, "Her voice was penetrating. The volume as such was average: neither small nor powerful. But the penetration, allied to this incisive quality (which bordered on the ugly because it frequently contained an element of harshness) ensured that her voice could be clearly heard anywhere in the auditorium." In his book, Michael Scott makes the distinction that whereas Callas's pre-1954 voice was a "dramatic soprano with an exceptional top", after the weight loss, it became, as one Chicago critic described the voice in Lucia, however, this claim is refuted by John Ardoin's review of the live recording of the performance as well as by the review of the recording in Opera News, both of which refer to the note as a high E-natural. For Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi, "the most fantastic thing was the possibility for her to sing the soprano coloratura with this big voice! This was something really special. Fantastic absolutely!" she considered herself first and foremost "a musician, that is, the first instrument of the orchestra." Maestro Victor de Sabata confided to Walter Legge, "If the public could understand, as we do, how deeply and utterly musical Callas is, they would be stunned", Callas possessed an innate architectural sense of line-proportion
In addition to her musical skills, Callas had a particular gift for language and the use of language in music. Soprano Martina Arroyo states, "What interested me most was how she gave the runs and the cadenzas words. That always floored me. I always felt I heard her saying something – it was never just singing notes. That alone is an art." Callas was not, however, a realistic or verismo style actress: Mathew Gurewitsch adds,
In fact the essence of her art was refinement. The term seems odd for a performer whose imagination and means of expression were so prodigious. She was eminently capable of the grand gesture; still, judging strictly from the evidence of her recordings, we know (and her few existing film clips confirm) that her power flowed not from excess but from unbroken concentration, unfaltering truth in the moment. It flowed also from irreproachable musicianship. People say that Callas would not hesitate to distort a vocal line for dramatic effect. In the throes of operatic passion plenty of singers snarl, growl, whine, and shriek. Callas was not one of them. She found all she needed in the notes.
Ewa Podles likewise stated that "It's enough to hear her, I’m positive! Because she could say everything only with her voice! I can imagine everything, I can see everything in front of my eye." Sandro Sequi recalls, "She was never in a hurry. Everything was very paced, proportioned, classical, precise... She was extremely powerful but extremely stylized. Her gestures were not many... I don't think she did more than 20 gestures in a performance. But she was capable of standing 10 minutes without moving a hand or finger, compelling everyone to look at her." However, witnesses to the interview stated that Callas only said "champagne with cognac", and it was a bystander who quipped, "No, with Coca-Cola", but the
Time reporter attributed the latter comment to Callas.
Callas visited Tebaldi after a performance of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Met in the late 1960s, and the two were reunited. In 1978, Tebaldi spoke warmly of her late colleague and summarized this rivalry:
This rivality was really building from the people of the newspapers and the fans. But I think it was very good for both of us, because the publicity was so big and it created a very big interest about me and Maria and was very good in the end. But I don’t know why they put this kind of rivality, because the voice was very different. She was really something unusual. And I remember that I was very young artist too, and I stayed near the radio every time that I know that there was something on radio by Maria.
Louise Caselotti, who worked with Callas in 1946 and 1947, prior to her Italian debut, felt that it was not the heavy roles that hurt Callas's voice, but the lighter ones.
In the same vein, Joan Sutherland, who heard Callas throughout the 1950s, said in a BBC interview,
[Hearing Callas in Norma in 1952] was a shock, a wonderful shock. You just got shivers up and down the spine. It was a bigger sound in those earlier performances, before she lost weight. I think she tried very hard to recreate the sort of “fatness” of the sound which she had when she was as fat as she was. But when she lost the weight, she couldn’t seem to sustain the great sound that she had made, and the body seemed to be too frail to support that sound that she was making. Oh, but it was oh so exciting. It was thrilling. I don’t think that anyone who heard Callas after 1955 really heard the Callas voice.
Michael Scott has proposed that Callas's loss of strength and breath support was directly caused by her rapid and progressive weight-loss, This continual change in posture has been cited as visual proof of a progressive loss of breath support. It is also at this time that unsteady top notes first begin to appear.
There were others, however, who felt that the voice had benefitted from the weight loss. Of her performance of Norma in Chicago in 1954, Claudia Cassidy would write, "there is a slight unsteadiness in some of the sustained upper notes. but to me her voice is more beautiful in color, more even through the range, than it used to be".
Callas herself attributed her problems to a loss of confidence brought about by a loss of breath support, even though she does not make the connection between her weight and her breath support. In an April 1977 interview with journalist Philippe Caloni, she stated,
"My best recordings were made when I was skinny. and I say skinny, not slim, because I worked a lot and couldn't gain weight back; I became even too skinny. . . I had my greatest successes--Lucia, Sonnambula, Medea, Anna Bolena--when I was skinny as a nail. Even for my first time here in Paris in 1958 when the show was broadcast through Eurovision, I was skinny. Really skinny."
And shortly before her death, Callas confided her own thoughts on her vocal problems to Peter Dragadze:
I never lost my voice, but I lost strength in my diaphragm. ... Because of those organic complaints, I lost my courage and boldness. My vocal cords were and still are in excellent condition, but my 'sound boxes' have not been working well even though I have been to all the doctors. The result was that I overstrained my voice, and that caused it to wobble. (Gente, October 1, 1977) The scandal became notorious as the "Rome Walkout". Callas brought a lawsuit against the Rome Opera House, but by the time the case was settled thirteen years later and the Rome Opera was found to be at fault for having refused to provide an understudy,
Bing would later say that Callas was the most difficult artist he ever worked with, "because she was so much more intelligent. Other artists, you could get around. But Callas you could not get around. She knew exactly what she wanted, and why she wanted it." In his book about his wife, Meneghini states categorically that Maria Callas was unable to bear children. As well, various sources dismiss Gage's claim, as they note that the birth certificates Gage used to prove of this "secret child" were issued in 1998, twenty-one years after Callas's death. Still other sources claim that Callas had at least one abortion while involved with Onassis. The relationship ended nine years later in 1968, when Onassis left Callas in favour of Jacqueline Kennedy. However, the Onassis family's private secretary, Kiki, writes in her memoir that even while Aristotle was with Jackie, he frequently met up with Maria in Paris, where they resumed what had now become a clandestine affair.
Legacy
In late 2004, opera and film director Franco Zeffirelli made what many consider a bizarre claim that Callas may have been murdered by her confidant, Greek pianist Vasso Devetzi, in order to gain control of Callas's United States $9,000,000 estate. A more likely explanation is that Callas's death was due to heart failure brought on by (possibly unintentional) overuse of Mandrax (methaqualone), a sleeping aid.
According to biographer Stelios Galatopoulos, Devetzi insinuated herself into Callas's trust and acted virtually as her agent. This claim is corroborated by Iakintha (Jackie) Callas in her book Sisters, wherein she asserts that Devetzi conned Maria out of control of half of her estate, while promising to establish the Maria Callas Foundation to provide scholarships for young singers. After hundreds of thousands of dollars had allegedly vanished, Devetzi finally did establish the foundation.
In 2002, filmmaker Zeffirelli produced and directed a film in Callas's memory. Callas Forever was a highly fictionalized motion picture in which Callas was played by Fanny Ardant. It depicted the last months of Callas's life, when she was seduced into the making of a movie of Carmen, lip-synching to her 1964 recording of that opera.
In 2007, Callas was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In the same year, she was voted the greatest soprano of all time by BBC Music Magazine.
The 30th anniversary of the death of Maria Callas was selected as main motif for a high value euro collectors' coins; the €10 Greek Maria Callas commemorative coin, minted in 2007. Her image is shown in the obverse of the coin, while on the reverse the National Emblem of Greece with her signature is depicted.
On December 2, 2008, on the 85th anniversary of Callas's birth, a group of Greek and Italian officials unveiled a plaque in her honor at Flower Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center) where she was born. Made of Carrara marble and engraved in Italy, the plaque reads, "Maria Callas was born in this hospital on December 2, 1923. These halls heard for the first time the musical notes of her voice, a voice which has conquered the world. To this great interpreter of universal language of music, with gratitude."
Gus Van Sant's 2008 movie Milk features selected recordings of Callas' rendition of Tosca, which, it is suggested, was an opera of which Harvey Milk was particularly fond. Similarly, Jonathan Demme's 1993 movie Philadelphia features a recording by Callas.
A number of musical artists including Linda Ronstadt, Patti Smith and Emmylou Harris have mentioned Callas as a great musical influence, and some have paid tribute to Callas in their own music:
R.E.M. mention Callas in their song "E-Bow the Letter" from the album New Adventures in Hi-Fi.
Enigma named a song which featured samples of Callas's voice, on their 1991 album MCMXC a.D., "Callas Went Away".
Buffalo Tom's 2007 album Three Easy Pieces contains the song "C.C. and Callas", which appears to be about songwriter Chris Colbourn's reflections on Callas.
La Diva, on Celine Dion's 2007 French language album D'elles is about Maria Callas. The track samples the 1956 recording of La Boheme.
Singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright mentions Callas in his song "Beauty Mark", from his album Rufus Wainwright. Rufus is known to be an opera fan, particularly passionate about Callas's work. In an interview to the Spanish newspaper El País, he declared that one of the things anyone should do at least once in a lifetime was to listen to a Maria Callas album after a night out, if possible during sunrise. On Jonathan Ross' Radio 2 show he stated that Lord Harewood's interview of Callas is part of the inspiration for his opera Prima Donna.
Jason Mraz lists her performance of "
O mio babbino caro" as a romantic musical influence for him.
Ben Sollee mentions her in his song "Mute with a Bullhorn."
Band Faithless sampled her voice on the intro to one of their songs on Reverence, "Drifting Away".
The Mountain Goats mention Callas in their song "Horseradish Road" from the album The Coroner's Gambit.
Notable recordings
All recordings are in mono unless otherwise indicated. Live performances are typically available on multiple labels.
Verdi, Nabucco, conducted by Vittorio Gui, live performance, Napoli, 20 December 1949
Verdi, Il trovatore, conducted by Guido Picco, live performance, Mexico City, June 20, 1950
Verdi, Aida, conducted by Oliviero De Fabritiis, live performance, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, July 3, 1951
Ponchielli, La Gioconda, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for Fonit Cetra, September 1952
Bellini, Norma, conducted by Vittorio Gui, live performance, Covent Garden, London, November 18, 1952
Verdi, Macbeth, conducted by Victor de Sabata, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7, 1952
Bellini, I puritani, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, March–April 1953
Mascagni, Cavalleria rusticana, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, August 1953
Puccini,
Tosca, conducted by
Victor de Sabata, studio recording for EMI, August 1953.
Verdi, La traviata, conducted by Gabriele Santini, studio recording for Fonit Cetra, September 1953
Cherubini, Medea, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 10, 1953
Leoncavallo, Pagliacci, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, June 1954
Spontini, La vestale, conducted by Antonino Votto, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7, 1954
Verdi, La traviata, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, live performance, La Scala, Milan, May 28, 1955
Puccini, Madama Butterfly, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, studio recording for EMI, August 1955
Verdi, Aida, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, August 1955
Verdi, Rigoletto, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, September 1955
Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, live performance, Berlin, September 29, 1955
Bellini, Norma, conducted by Antonino Votto, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7, 1955.
Verdi, Il trovatore, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, studio recording for EMI, August 1956
Puccini, La bohème, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI, August–September 1956. Like her later recording of Carmen, this was her only performance of the complete opera, as she never appeared onstage in it.
Verdi, Un ballo in maschera, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI, September 1956
Rossini, The Barber of Seville, conducted by Alceo Galliera, studio recording for EMI in stereo, February 1957
Bellini, La sonnambula, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI, March 1957
Donizetti, Anna Bolena, conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, live performance, La Scala, Milan, April 14, 1957
Bellini, La sonnambula, conducted by Antonino Votto, live performance, Cologne, July 4, 1957
Puccini, Turandot, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for EMI, July 1957
Cherubini, Medea, conducted by Tullio Serafin, studio recording for Ricordi in stereo, September 1957
Verdi, Un ballo in maschera, conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, live performance, La Scala, Milan, December 7, 1957
Verdi, La traviata, conducted by Franco Ghione, live performance, Lisbon, March 27, 1958
Mad Scenes (excerpts from Anna Bolena, Bellini's Il pirata and Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet), conducted by Nicola Rescigno, studio recording for EMI in stereo, September 1958
Cherubini, Medea conducted by Nicola Rescigno, live performance at the Dallas Civic Opera in 1958; considered to be Callas's most notable performance of Cherubini's opera.
Ponchielli, La Gioconda, conducted by Antonino Votto, studio recording for EMI in stereo, September 1959
Puccini, Tosca, conducted by Carlo Felice Cillario, live performance, London, January 1964
Bizet, Carmen, conducted by Georges Prêtre, studio recording for EMI in stereo, 1964. It is her only performance of the role, and her only performance of the complete opera; she never appeared in it onstage. The recording used the recitatives added after Bizet's death. Callas's performance caused critic Harold C. Schonberg to speculate in his book The Glorious Ones that Callas perhaps should have sung mezzo roles instead of simply soprano ones.
Puccini, Tosca, conducted by Georges Prêtre, studio recording for EMI in stereo, December 1964.
References
In "All love (Solo amore)" cd - June 2010,Santeramo Musica Release - by Giovanni Tangorra composer, a track her dedicated: "Rainha Maria (Onassis story)": singer Marika Spadafino, guitar Nicola Albano
Bibliography
External links
Divina Callas's official website
Maria Callas International Club
German Maria Callas Club
Newsreel on Maria Callas' "Rome Walkout"
International Jose Guillermo Carrillo Foundation
A very extensive and accurate list of all her performances and recordings by Frank Hamilton
Discography (Capon's Lists of Opera Recordings)
Music in MP3 format
Visit Maria Callas at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris
Maria Callas in an excerpt from Tosca (1956).
"Living and Dying for Art and Love" Free documentary on her last performance(ClassicalTV)
Eva Mendes to play Maria Callas in film based on "Greek Fire"
The YouTube channel dedicated to Maria Callas and her art
Maria Callas: Voice Of Perfect Imperfection by NPR
Articles on Callas Indepth articles discussing Callas's recorded legacy by Dr. Robert E. Seletsky and Milan Petkovic.
Category:1923 births
Category:1977 deaths
Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in France
Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction
Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Category:Greek artists
Category:Greek female singers
Category:Greek opera singers
Category:Greek sopranos
Category:Operatic sopranos
 - Foto Giovanni Dall'Orto 14-7-2007.jpg)
