Maria Callas in the news
Callas on television.
- Faye Dunaway’s film of Terrence McNally’s Master Class is reportedly in post-production.
- On 17 and 18 March, Great Performers at Lincoln Center will present a three-part series, “Callas on Film.” The Callas Effect (2011) is the first offering, and I think it’s a pretty sorry one. Here’s hoping that the other screenings are more substantial.
- An exhibit is on in Egypt of photographs by Philipe Koudjina, who shot Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini during their travels in Africa. (The article says that he did so in 1965, but I’m fairly certain it was five or six years later.)
- In a Qobuz interview, Juliette Gréco recalls Callas. “[She] often came to hear me sing and would tape me in concert with a little recorder. She was very kind to me. For me she was the greatest… Today I love Cecilia Bartoli for her joie de vivre. She is an angel blessed with happiness, the opposite of Maria Callas, who was a character from Greek tragedy.” The article includes a photo of Callas and Gréco.
- A new book of interviews with Janine Reiss has been published in France. It includes a chapter on Maria Callas.
- An exhibit is on in Casarsa (Friuli-Venezia Giulia) for the ninetieth anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s birth: Organizar il trasumanar. Pier Paolo Pasolini cristiano delle origini o gnostico moderno. It includes portraits he made of Callas (one in shown in the article). According to the exhibit’s curator, “With his great sensitivity, Pasolini intuits that Callas will die soon. His passion is for the drama she carries within her.”
Ah yes, everyone “always knew”, in hindsight, that Callas was doomed. And how convenient that she was (sort of) Greek, too.
I’m assuming Pasolini’s own material isn’t to blame for the curator’s remarks, but Zeffirelli and McNally have me thinking that there will always be a section of Callas’ gay admirers who think of her as Norma Desmond with better legato. (Or maybe it’s a section of all her admirers, but one feels most comfortable snubbing one’s own sort.)
I agree with you re: Norma Desmond stuff. And I don’t think that poor Pasolini is responsible for the curator’s reading of his work.