The beginner’s guide to Maria Callas

Early life and education

Though American by birth (her Greek parents had emigrated to the USA in the year of Maria’s birth), Callas left the USA for Athens in 1937 (aged 13) when her mother became fed up with her husband’s cheating.

In Greece, the young Maria Callas began her musical education at the age of 13. Her first vocal training was undertaken by Maria Trivella at the Greek National Conservatory. Callas’s then lower contralto voice raised and lightened to that of a soprano.

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Bel canto

Career highlights

Callas launched her post-war career by singing Ponchielli’s La Gioconda in Verona under leading Italian conductor, Tullio Serafin.

She was soon in demand all over Italy, often singing “heavier” soprano roles such as Verdi’s Aida and Wagner’s (Tristan and Isolde), Kundry (Parsifal) and even Brünnhilde from The Valkyrie.

Serafin became a mentor to her, and he steered her away from heavier roles towards earlier, lighter-voiced Italian works. These included Bellini (I Puritani and Norma, Donizetti (Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena) Verdi’s Violetta (La traviata) and Gilda (Rigoletto) and Puccini’s Tosca.

She also performed many rare and challenging ‘bel canto’ operas including Gluck’s Alceste, Cherubini’s Médée and Spontini’s La vestale.

She made triumphant appearances at the world’s most notable opera houses throughout the 1950s. She sung at La Scala, Milan; Covent Garden, London; the Lyric Theatre of Chicago; and the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

Her high-profile appearances were not without their own dramas off-stage. Callas fell out spectacularly with the Met Opera’s General Manager Rudolf Bing. She had well-known rivalry with the other leading international soprano of the period, Renata Tebaldi.

Always her own fiercest critic, her exacting high standards and stringent demands on herself sometimes meant she would prefer to withdraw from an engagement rather than sing below par and disappoint her public – despite any contractual consequences.

Even in the 1950s, when she was at the height of her career and commanded the highest fees, vocal problems were becoming evident. These included an unevenness in her vocal registers and a pronounced tremolo on high notes.

Some have argued that a noticeable loss of weight around 1953/54 were the cause of these vocal difficulties, or that her training was inadequate.

To be sure, there were problems. But anyone who listens to Callas’s recording of ‘Casta diva’ from Bellini’s Norma or watches her Tosca from 1965 (the only existing footage of a Callas role), two of her greatest roles, cannot fail to be moved by the expressive power of her acting and singing in combination.

In the 1960s, Callas withdrew from the operatic stage more and more, probably because of the problems with her voice, but also because of changes in her personal life.

She made her final operatic appearances in July 1965, in Tosca at Covent Garden. She was only 41 years old, an age when most sopranos are at their peak.

Later Life and Legacy

In the late 1950s, Callas began an affair with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis while she was still married to her husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini.

This affair relationship received much publicity at the time, and even after Onassis married Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of President John F. Kennedy, he continued to meet frequently with Callas.

It has been argued that Callas saw the affair with Onassis, which she might have hoped lead to marriage, as a way out of a career in crisis.

After Onassis abandoned her for good, Callas attempted to revive her career by giving masterclasses at the Juilliard School in New York and embarked on an international series of joint recitals in 1973/4 with Giuseppe di Stefano, the tenor with whom she had performed often in her heyday.

These sold-out recitals were artistically flawed – both singers were past their sell-by-date – however, they proved hugely popular with the public, who had never forgotten the Callas magic.