Maria Callas in the news
Maria Callas as Medea for Pasolini.
La Stampa reports that the tradition of opening the La Scala season on 7 December, the feast day of Saint Ambrose (Milan’s patron), goes back only to 1951, when Callas opened the season in Verdi’s I vespri siciliani. Who knew?
Dacia Maraini reports (again) that Callas wanted to marry Pier Paolo Pasolini. “Maria wanted to ‘cure’ him of his homosexuality. Her idea was rather childish. People don’t change their sexual tendencies at fifty years of age. Pier Paolo loved her a great deal, but platonically. His relationship with Maria wasn’t based on sexuality, only on sentiment.” More on Callas and Maraini here.
Pasolini’s film of Medea starring Maria Callas has just been released in the British Film Institute’s restoration in a dual-format (DVD and Blu-ray) edition in the UK and in separate editions here in the States. (Please correct me if I’m wrong: I don’t own a television set and don’t know from DVDs. That said, I would welcome a big flat-panel monitor as a Jewsmas gift.)
Meanwhile, I had no idea EMI was releasing yet another “greatest performances”-meets-documentary Callas CD. Really, how many times can they recycle the music and everyone in the world recycle the footage?
http://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2011/12/Recordings/Maria_Callas__The_Callas_Effect.html
I think I will reply to you but in a post, maybe on Monday. What’s saddest to me is that the “experts” or “talking heads” about Callas put forward by EMI have increasingly little to do with Callas or opera. (Some seem to be the children of people who saw Callas. Strange!)