Maria Callas

Maria Callas (born Maria Anna Cecilia Sophia Kalogeropoulou; December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Many critics praised her bel canto technique, wide-ranging voice and dramatic interpretations. Her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini, and further to the works of Verdi and Puccini, and in her early career to the music dramas of Wagner. Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina ("The Divine One").

Born in Manhattan and raised in Astoria, Queens, New York City, to Greek immigrant parents, she was raised by an overbearing mother who had wanted a son. Maria received her musical education in Greece at age 13 and later established her career in Italy. Forced to deal with the exigencies of 1940s wartime poverty and with near-sightedness that left her nearly blind on stage, she endured struggles and scandal over the course of her career. She underwent 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 temperamental behavior, the alleged Callas–Tebaldi rivalry, and her love affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Onassis's wife, Athina "Tina" Onassis Niarchos, divorced him when she discovered that he was having an affair with Callas.

Although her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press, 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."

Her ashes were scattered over the Aegean Sea on 3 June 1979, fulfilling one of her last wishes.

Life and career

Family life, childhood and move to Greece

The name on Callas's New York birth certificate is Sophie Cecilia Kalos, although she was christened Maria Anna Cecilia Sophia Kalogeropoulou (Greek: Μαρία Άννα Καικιλία Σοφία Καλογεροπούλου). She was born at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center) on December 2, 1923, to Greek parents Elmina Evangelia "Litsa" (née Demes, originally Dimitriadou; c. 1894–1982) and George Kalogeropoulos (c. 1881–1972). Callas's father had shortened the surname Kalogeropoulos, first to Kalos and subsequently to Callas to make it more manageable. Her father was from Neohori, a settlement in Messenia, while her mother was from Stylida, Phthiotis.

George and Litsa Callas were an ill-matched couple from the beginning. George was easy-going and unambitious, with no interest in the arts, and Litsa was vivacious and socially ambitious and had dreamed of a life in the arts, which her middle-class parents had stifled in her childhood and youth. Litsa's father, Petros Dimitriadis (1852–1916), was in failing health when Litsa introduced George to her family. Petros, distrustful of George, warned his daughter, "You will never be happy with him. If you marry that man, I will never be able to help you." Litsa ignored his warning but soon realized that her father was right. The situation was aggravated by George's philandering and was improved neither by the birth of their daughter Yakinthi (later called "Jackie"), in 1917, nor the birth of their son Vassilis, in 1920. Vassilis's death from meningitis in the summer of 1922 dealt another blow to the marriage.

In 1923, after realizing that Litsa was pregnant again, George moved his family to the United States, a decision that Yakinthi recalled was greeted with Litsa "shouting hysterically" followed by George "slamming doors". The family left for New York in July 1923, moving first into an apartment in the heavily immigrant neighborhood of Astoria, Queens.

Litsa was convinced that her third child would be a boy, and her disappointment at the birth of another daughter was so great that she refused even to look at her new baby for four days. Maria was christened three years later, in 1926, at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. When Maria was four, George Callas opened his own pharmacy, settling the family in Manhattan on 192nd Street in Washington Heights, where Callas grew up. Around the age of three, Maria's musical talent began to manifest itself, and after Litsa discovered that her younger daughter also had a voice, she began pressing "Mary" to sing. Callas later recalled, "I was made to sing when I was only five, and I hated it." George was unhappy with his wife favoring their elder daughter, as well as the pressure put upon young Mary to sing and perform, and Litsa was increasingly embittered with George and his absences and infidelity and often violently reviled him in front of their children. The marriage continued to deteriorate, and in 1937 Litsa returned to Athens with her two daughters.

Relationship with mother

Callas's relationship with her mother continued to erode during the years in Greece, and in the prime of her career it became a matter of great public interest, especially after a 1956 cover story in Time magazine, which focused on their relationship, and later by Litsa's book, My Daughter Maria Callas (1960). In public, Callas recalls the strained relationship with Litsa and her unhappy childhood spent singing and working at her mother's insistence, saying,

My sister was slim and beautiful and friendly, and my mother always preferred her. I was the ugly duckling, fat and clumsy and unpopular. It is a cruel thing to make a child feel ugly and unwanted ... I'll never forgive her for taking my childhood away. During all the years, I should have been playing and growing up, I was singing or making money. Everything I did for them was mostly good and everything they did to me was mostly bad.

In 1957, she told Chicago radio host Norman Ross Jr, "There must be a law against forcing children to perform at an early age. Children should have a wonderful childhood. They should not be given too much responsibility."

Biographer Nicholas Petsalis-Diomidis says that Litsa's hateful treatment of George in front of their young children led to resentment and dislike on Callas's part. According to both Callas's husband and her close friend Giulietta Simionato, Callas related to them that her mother, who did not work, pressed her to "go out with various men", mainly Italian and German soldiers, to bring home money and food during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. Simionato was convinced that Callas "managed to remain untouched" but never forgave her mother for what she perceived as a kind of prostitution forced on her. Litsa, beginning in New York and continuing in Athens, had adopted a questionable lifestyle that included not only pushing her daughters into degrading situations to support her financially but also entertaining Italian and German soldiers during the Axis occupation.

In an attempt to patch things up with her mother, Callas took Litsa along on her first visit to Mexico in 1950, but this only reawakened the old frictions and resentments, and after leaving Mexico, they never met again. After a series of angry and accusatory letters from Litsa lambasting Callas's father and husband, Callas ceased communication with her mother altogether.

A 1955 Time magazine story covered Callas's response to her mother's request for $100, "for my daily bread." Callas had replied, "Don't come to us with your troubles. I had to work for my money, and you are young enough to work, too. If you can't make enough money to live on, you can jump out of the window or drown yourself." Callas justified her behavior ... "They say my family is very short of money. Before God, I say why should they blame me? I feel no guilt and I feel no gratitude. I like to show kindness, but you mustn't expect thanks, because you won't get any. That's the way life is. If some day I need help, I wouldn't expect anything from anybody. When I'm old, nobody is going to worry about me."

Education

Callas received her musical education in Athens. Initially, her mother tried to enroll her at the prestigious Athens Conservatoire, without success. At the audition, her voice, still untrained, failed to impress, and the conservatoire's director Filoktitis Oikonomidis refused to accept her without her satisfying the theoretic prerequisites (solfege). In the summer of 1937, her mother visited Maria Trivella at the younger Greek National Conservatoire, asking her to take Mary, as she was then called, as a student for a modest fee. In 1957, Trivella recalled her impression of "Mary, a very plump young girl, wearing big glasses for her myopia":

The tone of the voice was warm, lyrical, intense; it swirled and flared like a flame and filled the air with melodious reverberations like a carillon. It was by any standards an amazing phenomenon, or rather it was a great talent that needed control, technical training and strict discipline in order to shine with all its brilliance.