Word: callases
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"Have no doubt about who you are," Maria Callas once counseled a student soprano. La Divina, as she was called, was talking about the art of portraying an operatic heroine onstage. But she might have been offering her philosophy of life. She came out of an unhappy childhood-appallingly fat...
Who was Callas, the subject of such ire and much admiration? She was a woman for whom the term prima donna could have been invented. Tempestuous, unpredictable, charming, ruthless, overwhelmingly talented, capable of canceling a performance halfway through (as she did once in Rome) even with a King in the...
The smoky, hooded voice seemed to come from some atomic source within her. It floated dramatic feeling to the audience in ways that sometimes seemed inappropriate to the part but were compelling beyond measure. In Callas' lifetime, only Beverly Sills came close to matching her ability to command and...
In her prime, Callas sang dramatic, lyric and coloratura roles with equal ease. Almost singlehanded she created the revival of bel canto. It was because of her voice and presence that Norma and I Puritani are now popular after decades of neglect. For this one accomplishment, hordes of opera lovers...
Her greatest practical contribution to opera, though, as Sills noted when she heard of Callas' death, lay in "erasing the image that all opera singers are fat with horns growing out of their heads." Callas had no horns-except in the eyes of rival singers and every impresario who...