Well, the first thing to understand about this singer is that even she didn’t like the sound of her own voice.
If you know anything about opera, you’ve probably guessed that the singer is Maria Callas. And though she sobbed when she first heard a tape recording of her voice, she made it distinctive, expressive, and utterly recognizable—“Callas,” people will say, within five seconds of hearing her sing.
Well, she’s a fascinating character, this Greek girl who had no childhood, but had iron discipline and a steely will. Her mother, recognizing her talent, pushes and pushes, and Maria at age five is singing, not playing. Later, her discipline drives her to spend hours at the conservatory, regularly opening and closing the building. And she succeeds—by the time she leaves Greece at age 22 to visit her father in the United States, she had given 20 recitals, and sung in 56 performances of seven operas.
She’s almost blind, and she is—well, pudgy plump or just plain fat. That, from a vocal point of view, is not a problem. In fact, there’s a school of thought that says that all that weight supports the breath. While that may be true, it can also create problems—Callas said that she felt that her voice itself was becoming heavy. And there was the other little problem—she felt the irony of playing slim, dainty heroine when she herself was, in Sir Rudolf Bing’s words, “monstrously fat.”
At any rate, in her early career she had a huge voice that was capable both of heavy, dramatic parts but also lighter, coloratura parts. OK—plain English. There are some voices that are vocally tanks—they can blast through an orchestra blaring at full volume; they tend, however, not to maneuver very well. There are other voices that are mopeds—they can zip around anything. What’s rare is to have the vocal ability to do both.
Callas could, and astounded. Yes, even from the beginning, there were detractors—largely the old school who demanded a beautiful, clean voice, not an ugly voice with a huge expressive range and wonderful colors. And yes, she wasn’t always having her best night. True also that the voice came with a temperament—there are no recorded instances of anyone describing Callas as “placid.”
So it was a chance, when you plunked down the cash for a performance of Callas. The first question—would she show? The second—would she be any good?
So why did anyone do it? Because if she did come through in both departments, you would have an experience you’d remember for the rest of your life.
She was a phenomenal actress; here’s one director’s view:
For me, she was extremely stylized and classic, yet at the same time, human—but humanity on a higher plane of existence, almost sublime. Realism was foreign to her, and that is why she was the greatest of opera singers. After all, opera is the least realistic of theater forms... She was wasted in verismo roles, even Tosca, no matter how brilliantly she could act such roles.
Speaking of Tosca, it’s often said that she never, ever checked to see whether the stage hands had placed material to cushion her leap from the window. Other singers rush up the ladder, take—well—just a little peek. Callas scorned the idea.
In mid career—the 1950’s, Callas decides to lose weight, which she does not by swallowing a tapeworm, as critics whispered, but by eating salad and chicken. And though it may have been great for her health and for her psyche, it didn’t help, perhaps, her singing. Here’s Renée Fleming on the subject:
I have a theory about what caused her vocal decline, but it's more from watching her sing than from listening. I really think it was her weight loss that was so dramatic and so quick. It's not the weight loss per se... But if one uses the weight for support, and then it's suddenly gone and one doesn't develop another musculature for support, it can be very hard on the voice. And you can't estimate the toll that emotional turmoil will take as well. I was told, by somebody who knew her well, that the way Callas held her arms to her solar plexus [allowed her] to push and create some kind of support. If she were a Soubrette, it would never have been an issue. But she was singing the most difficult repertoire, the stuff that requires the most stamina, the most strength.
Another singer, Deborah Voigt, had a gastric bypass operation and essentially mimicked the weight loss that Callas had undergone. Here’s what she has to say:
When I took a breath before, the weight would kick in and give it that extra Whhoomf! Now it doesn't do that. If I don't remember to get rid of the old air and re-engage the muscles, the breath starts stacking, and that's when you can't get your phrase, you crack high notes.
Callas would end her career in about a decade after her weight loss in 1954, and really, the last years are painful. She was a tempestuous woman, a fiery personality, a high-strung race horse in a profession where a plow horse might be better. But how the public loved it—when Bing fired her from the Met, or her rage-contorted face on being served a summons in Chicago.
And, of course, the rivalry—alleged or real—between Tebaldi and Callas. The two greatest divas of the fifties were traveling South America together, and had a falling out. Callas said in an interview that, “comparing her voice to mine is comparing Champagne to Cognac.” Someone else in the room said, “No, to Coca-Cola,” but the words are attributed to Callas. Tebaldi shot back, “I have something Callas does not have: a heart.”
What Tebaldi had was enviable. She had a very long career—twice as long as Callas’s. She had the more beautiful voice. She also lived long—Tebaldi died at 83, Callas at 53. And though there’s no way to measure the happiness quotient of a human life, much less to compare two lives, nothing can stop me from thinking that Tebaldi had the better deal. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:
During a 1978 interview, upon being asked "Was it worth it to Maria Callas? She was a lonely, unhappy, often difficult woman," music critic and Callas's friend John Ardoin replied,
That is such a difficult question. There are times when certain people are blessed—and cursed—with an extraordinary gift, in which the gift is almost greater than the human being. Callas was one of these people. It was as if her own wishes, her life, her own happiness were all subservient to this incredible, incredible gift that she was given, this gift that reached out and taught us things about music that we knew very well, but showed us new things, things we never thought about, new possibilities. I think that is why singers admire her so. I think that's why conductors admire her so. I know it's why I admire her so. And she paid a tremendously difficult and expensive price for this career. I don't think she always understood what she did or why she did it. She usually had a tremendous effect on audiences and on people. But it was not something she could always live with gracefully or happily. I once said to her "It must be a very enviable thing to be Maria Callas." And she said, "No, it's a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it's a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand." She couldn't really explain what she did. It was all done by instinct. It was something embedded deep within her.
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