Happy birthday, Maria Callas
Darling readers, Friday is Maria Callas’s birthday. Since I will be on the road, the celebrations are staring early!
Callas as a baby.
Maria Callas was born in New York, New York 88 years ago, on 2 December 1923.
The wee moppet shown in the photo grew up to be the disquieting Lucia, the ferocious Medea, the diaphanous Amina, the heartrending Violetta, and the sublime Norma who haunts our dreams even now, nearly half a century after her final performances in opera.
I wrote about the uncertainty surrounding her birthdate in my essay “Re-visioning Callas,” and also discussed some of the reasons why she remains a controversial figure.
But this week, in honor of her birthday, let’s sidestep the feuds and the minefields and toast Maria Callas with a glass or two of champagne. (Those of us who don’t imbibe can raise a coupe of Martinelli’s or rosewater.)
To my mind, the musical equivalent of champagne is Rossini, so a short Callas and Rossini playlist follows at the end of this post. I also include “Les feux d’artifice” from Rufus Wainwright’s opera Prima Donna, which is based in part on Callas’s life. I’ve written elsewhere about why I think that Prima Donna may paint a mawkish and misleading picture of Callas’s days in Paris. All the same, I think that it is a loving and beautiful tribute to her.
In Italian, we say cent’anni (“a hundred years”) for someone’s birthday, but this expression is redundant and inadequate in Callas’s case, because she is immortal. Mutatis mutandis, the final verses of Ovid’s Metamorphòses come to mind:
And now the work is done, that Jupiter’s anger, fire or sword cannot erase, nor the gnawing tooth of time. Let that day, that has power only over my body, end, when it will, my uncertain span of years: yet the best part of me will be borne, immortal, beyond the distant stars. Wherever Rome’s influence extends, over the lands it has civilised, I will be spoken, on people’s lips: and, famous through all the ages, if there is truth in poet’s prophecies,—vivam—I shall live.
Il turco in Italia: Selections one, two, and three.
Il barbiere di Siviglia: Selections one and two.
Rufus Wainwright, “Les feux d’artifice t’appellent”
Ciao, Cara!
I was going to comment on the 2nd, but your beautiful post inspired an immediate comment!
I think Ovid just summed-up (or prophesised!) everything that can be said about the immortal Callas legacy. I just hope that Maria, wherever/if she is in the beyond, can at least realise how loved she is – whatever she thought of her recordings and performances! She lived exclusively for her art, and therefore belonged to music and her public. Her life was a tough price to pay. But I somehow think that, all in all, we know – and she knew – it was worth it. Ovid was right. There is no greater gift than immortality.
I will write another comment *officially* on Friday. It’s such a shame that there is no grave, no site to visit. I suppose that can only mean that she’s ubiquitous…
Good to read you and thank you for your visit! I think you are correct re: “ubiquitous,” because of the proliferation of her sounds and images today and because she is everywhere in the sense of having changed hearts and minds about opera. *bacio*
Lovely post.
This is a complete tangent, but one of the Callas moments dearest to me is the lesson scene in the studio “Barber”. It’s something you usually hear sung perfunctorily or played for broad gags — but what an impossibly moving thing Callas makes of the simple, silly aria: no one could sound more honest singing that last “tu mi salva, per pieta” or more delirious on that final “delirar”. It just slays me.
I agree with you and wish that she had recorded more Rossini (“Armida,” of course, and “Ermione,” which was probably mighty obscure in the 1950s). I also wish that her “Barbiere” and “Turco” were less savagely cut!
And that there had been tenors around her who could handle all the Rossini passagework! I agree about the cuts. Though she seems to have approved of them, I wonder how much it had to do with what audiences were willing to hear.
This year we’ll celebrate Callas’s birthday with a recital in her hommage, the “Tributo a Maria Callas”. I hope we can record it in video – then I’ll send a copy to you.
Evviva La Divina, la Musa immortale!
I would love to hear the concert. Please let me know if it is available!