Word: scala
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Soprano Dobbs has traveled as far and fast as her admirers could have hoped, since she bowed at La Scala as Elvira in Rossini's L'ltaliana in Algeri three years ago (TIME, March 16, 1953). In Europe she has appeared before both opera and concert audiences from Stockholm to Mi lan. While studying in Paris she met her husband, a Spanish journalist named Luis Rodriguez, lost him 14 months later (he died of a liver ailment), two days before she was to sing a command performance of Le Cog d'Or at London's Covent...
...when Meneghini suggested that she give up singing, her demon drove her on. Success was in sight. La Scala asked her to do a guest performance of Aida. She accepted, but professed to scoff at the honor: "Sure, it's a magnificent theater. But me, I'm myopic. For me, theaters all look alike. La Scala is La Scala, but I'm Callas. and I'm myopic. Ecco...
...performance was a fair success, and La Scala offered her another guest appearance. But Callas had the scent of triumph in her nostrils. Haughtily, she refused. They would hire her as a full-fledged member of the company, or they would not get her at all. "They expected me to beg for a role. I would rather have died," she told friends. In 1951 La Scala capitulated. At the age of 28, she opened the Scala season in Sicilian Vespers...
...Maria Callas was still fat and half sick. She was inclined to break out in rashes and blotches; she was often feverish; her legs became painfully swollen. She took her resentments out on the people around her. Her first victim was another soprano, Renata Tebaldi, long-standing favorite of Scala audiences, possessor of a voice of creamy softness, musicianship of delicate sensibility, and a temperament to match. She was no match for Callas. From the beginning the two women glowered. Tebaldi stayed away from Callas' performances; Callas, on the warpath, sat in a prominent box at Tebaldi...
After her success at La Scala, Callas began to lose weight. In three years she dropped from 202 Ibs. to a sleek 135 Ibs. "She got what she wanted, so she stopped overeating," explained an interested doctor. In Milan she began to live the life of the prima donna and to look the part. Milan fondly encouraged her, wined and dined her whenever possible. Her life took on a sybaritic pattern. In the morning she usually sang at the piano on a glassed-in terrace outside her bedroom, polishing current roles. Afternoons, she visited her dressmaker or her beautician, taking...