Word: diva
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Instead of presenting Maria Callas [Oct. 29] as a true diva-one who is generous, dignified and kind-you only succeed in impressing me that she is an overindulged, selfish, unforgiving egocentric...
...title has almost lapsed. In the opera house teamwork is the cry. Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera even forbids solo curtain calls. At home the opera star is often no more glamorous than a suburban housewife. In an age of small-scale talent and matching egos, the one diva who truly deserves the proud title of prima donna, with all its overtones of good and evil, is Maria Meneghini Callas...
...another century. Maria Callas swept into New York. She arrived, as is proper for prima donnas, in triumph. Raised in Manhattan's upper west side, Maria Callas had left it as a fat, unhappy child of 14. She returned svelte, successful, the wife of an Italian millionaire, a diva more widely hated by her colleagues and more wildly acclaimed by her public than any other living singer. She returned to open the season next week in Bellini's Norma at the Metropolitan-which only eleven years ago just could not seem to find a suitable role...
...century ago, La Callas can sing anything written for the female voice. Because of her, La Scala has revived some operas (Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, Verdi's Sicilian Vespers, Cherubini's Medea) that it had not staged for years because no modern diva could carry them...
...professional friends. Some have helped her on her way. But from the first the lonely, fat girl from Manhattan saw herself pitted single-handed against a world of enemies. In her triumph, she takes fierce pride in her defiant self-reliance. At La Scala supporters of a rival diva hiss her regularly. It only arouses Callas to cold fury...