Word: christoff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Onstage, Callas' thirst for personal acclaim is insatiable. She grabs solo curtain calls whenever she can, even after another singer's big scene. Backstage in Rome. Basso Boris Christoff once seized her with one big paw, forced her to stand still. "Now. Maria," he decreed, "either we all go out there together, or nobody goes out." Tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano says: "I'm never going to sing opera with her again, and that's final." Said a close acquaintance: "The day will come when Maria will have to sing by herself...
Self-approving behavior comes naturally to 37-year-old Basso Christoff. The King of Bulgaria heard him sing 14 years ago and told him that it would redound to the glory of Bulgaria if he were to become famous as a singer throughout the world. To see that he did, the King gave the young man a royal scholarship, sent him to Italy for study and experience. Christoff fled to Salzburg when the Germans occupied Italy ("not wanting to get in any kind of a war"), later returned and applied for Italian citizenship and married an Italian girl...
...Francisco Opera, second to Manhattan's Metropolitan in rank, is second to none in discovering and importing good foreign singers.*Last week it pulled a double coup, gave U.S. listeners their first chance to hear famed Bulgarian Basso Boris Christoff and beauteous Turkish Soprano Leyla Gencer. Gencer, loved at first sight, was the modest and moving star of Zandonai's rarely heard Francesco, da Rimini; Christoff, playing his temperament to the hilt, was almost the ruination of Boris Godunov...
...With Christoff, the trouble began during the first orchestral rehearsal. The trouble: no Christoff. He was sulking in stubborn silence in his dressing room, apparently because he did not like Leo Kerz's stage design. Twenty minutes later, Director Kurt Herbert Adler had moved some furniture and props-Christoff likes to play in profile instead of facing the audience-and the rehearsal went on. The actual performance was given in a strange melange of heavy, traditional furniture and Kerz's stark, modern setting, framed in 14 big, black, red-tipped vertical daggers; neither set nor performance...
...never let his voice reach its maximum power (he saved that for his death scene), indulged in no gasps or sobs, nevertheless developed a painful pitch of feeling as he reached the nadir, almost whispering "Gospodi!" ("Oh my God!"). Not a handclap broke the hushed silence when he finished. Christoff's Boris is no lunatic, but a sensitive, conscience-stricken man whose terror at his infanticide finally cracks his sanity. The audience loved him. but not quite so much as he seemed to expect...