QUOTATIONS BY MARIA CALLAS
"To sing is an expression of your being, a being which is becoming."
"An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house."
"When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it had missed the point."
"I would like to be Maria, but there is La Callas who demands that I carry myself with her dignity."
"I cannot switch my voice. My voice is not like an elevator going up and down."
"I also have a little bit of a dreamy side, where everything is loyal, everything is beautiful and pure."
"When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping."
"We must not forget that the composer drew his inspiration from a script - a drama - and that the music sprang from every word of that drama. The notes weren't simply chosen as ornamentation. Every note and every phrase has a precise meaning, and it varies enormously, as in a conversation. Wouldn't it be horrible to hear someone express varied sentiments without ever changing the tone of voice?"
"I was something new to listen to."
"When I work on a character, I always ask myself: 'If I were in her place, what would I do?' One must transform oneself while remaining oneself. From time to time I consult the historical context, but with prudence. When I played Anne Boleyn, for instance, I wanted to read books, collect information, and I realized that the real historical person had very little to do with the heroine of the opera! I think that it's instinct in the first place that points us in the right direction - the music suffices to explain everything."
"First I lost weight, then I lost my voice, and now I've lost Onassis."
QUOTATIONS BY OTHERS
"She achieved in her singing a level of musicality and technical capacity which places her among the greatest musicians - in any genre - of the century; she acted her roles with a physical eloquence that impressed audiences deeply; she restored circulation to a body of operatic literature that has lacked a commanding exponent for years."
Will Crutchfield, The New Yorker
"Sensibility, art and intelligence truly out of the ordinary."
Il Messagero (Turandot, Caracalla, 1948)
"There is only one Callas."
Ernest de Weerth in Opera News (Un Ballo in Maschera, La Scala, 1957)
"One of those electrifying fusions of music, theatre and personality that opera-goers are only occasionally privileged to witness, and are seldom able to forget."
Winthrop Sargeant in The New Yorker (La Traviata, Metropolitan, 1958)
"Callas - a muse re-incarnated."
Henry Lemaire in Le Soir (Brussels Concert, 1959)
"Callas was so incredibly famous and idolized and Maria was ignored. She wanted to make Maria the equal of Callas. And when she did that she had no idea the price she would pay."
John Ardoin
"She is the greatest musician on the stage today."
Andrew Porter in Musical Times (Norma, Paris, 1964)
"As a person Maria, despite her appearance of great assurance, was a fragile person, and she tried to overcome that for the press. But her main trait was the greatness of her art."
Nicola Resigno
"One of the greatest and most versatile operatic singers in recent history. She sang an incredible variety of roles; from Wagnerian to light coloratura; from high soprano to mezzo. But it is not just the range of roles she was capable of singing, but how she sang them that makes her special. She had a distinctive vocal timbre which she could colour in a seemingly infinite number of manners. She could also act, a rarity with opera singers still today. She was a joy to listen to and watch. True, her voice was flawed, but her artistry was unmatched."
Scott Eric Smith
"Opera has new possibilities, thanks to her - after Callas there is no turning back."
Terence McNally
"All must be contained within the musical form - the integration of acting and singing must be absolute. In Callas, this integration became nothing short of miraculous."
Tito Gobbi
"It was something one hears only once in a lifetime."
Tito Gobbi in My Life (La Traviata, Sao Paolo, 1951)
"With Maria it was not performing but living."
Tito Gobbi in My Life
"She shone for all too brief a while in the world of opera, like a vivid flame attracting the attention of the whole world, and she had a strange magic which was all her own. I always thought she was immortal - and she is."
Tito Gobbi in My Life
"She was Tosca every second of the performance, the way she moved and sang, the way she listened to colleagues when they sang. Better than Callas we shall never see."
Tito Gobbi
"The greatest theatrical musical artist of our time."
Sir David Webster, Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1964.)
"An artist to her fingertips: the real royal thing."
Desmond Shawe-Taylor in Opera (Lucia di Lammermoor, Berlin, 1955)
"Of Callas's artistic pre-eminence there can be no doubt. Among her contemporaries she had the deepest comprehension of the Classical Italian style, the most musical instincts and the most intelligent approach. There was authority in all that she did on the stage and in every phrase that she uttered ... numerous recordings, including many complete operas, remain to show that her technical defects were outweighed by her genius."
Desmond Shawe-Taylor, New Grove Dictionary of Opera
"She opened a door for all the singers in the world, a door that had been closed. Behind it was sleeping not only great music but great ideas of interpretation."
Montserrat Caballé
"The sound of the voice was so instantly recognizable, and all the words she sang had the right colours to convey the meaning to all who watched."
Marian Nowakowski
"Callas was in poor voice, she knew it too. She didn't deceive herself about the state of her singing. She was visibly nervous. But her use of words, the vitality of language in her singing, was amazing. She was hellbent on her own destruction, and broke all the rules of singing. But so what? That's why 20 years later we're talking about her."
Beverly Sills, after seeing Callas in La Traviata (1958)
CALLAS ON SOME OF HER OPERATIC ROLES
".... She hasn't won. She hasn't even planned it. She's just terrified, and I've tried not to plan it up until the last minute, even when she sees the knife, it's just a consequence of it. But frankly she just hates the man - can't stand him - is against his principles, and just is a nervous woman, that her circumstances have overcome her. But she hasn't won."
Maria Callas on Tosca - Paris 1968
".... I've seen her a very static figure, barbaric creature, that knows what she wants from the beginning. And as I grew, I learned to know that Medea, though she was a very nasty character, after all though, Giasone was even worse than she was."
Maria Callas on Medea - Paris 1968
"... I had studied La Traviata, never Lucia, because I never considered it - I never took that into consideration."
Maria Callas on Lucia di Lammermoor - Paris 1968
" For Lady Macbeth the voice should be heavy, thick and strong. The role, and therefore the voice, should have an atmosphere of darkness."
Maria Callas on Lady Macbeth - Paris 1968
" Butterfly's music is treacherous ... You have to know how to sing very well to survive."
Maria Callas - New York 1972
"... Vocally it is one of the most difficult. The fact that it is comparatively short makes it harder for her to dominate the drama. And she must, because everything in the plot revolves around her - she is the pivotal character in the opera."
Maria Callas on Leonora (Il Trovatore) - Paris 1968
" It's a legato that you should pursue always ... How many times, like in Sonnambula, that it is an intenseness, that it is a smoothness that must always exist. But there are times when it is a purer smoothness, in other words, it's more dreamy or poetic."
Maria Callas on La Sonnambula - Paris 1968
" Anne Boleyn is by Donizetti as you well know, and history has the story of Anne Boleyn, which is quite different from the Donizetti Anne Boleyn. Donizetti has made her a sublime woman, a victim, a victim of circumstances and nearly a heroine."
Maria Callas on Anna Bolena - Paris 1968
CURIOSITIES
Callas was performing Medea at La Scala on 11 December 1961. She was not in good voice and during her first act duet with Jason (performed by Jon Vickers), the audience began hissing. Maria ignored the crowd until she reached the point in the text where she denounces Jason with a word "Crudel!" (Cruel man!). After the first "Crudel!" she stopped singing. She looked out into the crowd and directed her second "Crudel!" directly to the public. She paused and started again with the words "Ho dato tutto a te" (I gave everything to you) and shook her fist at the gallery. The audience stopped hissing and Maria received a huge ovation at the end.
Callas made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on 28 October 1956 as Norma. The legendary soprano Zinka Milanov received more applause when she took her seat than Callas did when she made her entrance. By the end of the final act, though, the New York public surrendered and Maria received 16 curtain calls.
The great German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf went to see Callas in La Traviata at the Arena in Verona, Italy. Following the performance, Schwarzkopf offered Maria one of the most moving tributes she had ever received: Elisabeth would never sing La Traviata again. When asked to explain her decision, Schwarzkopf replied, "What is the sense in doing a part that another contemporary artist can do to perfection?"
After her first I Puritani on 19 January 1949, Callas became the talk of Italy. It was a huge success, even though she had made some small mistakes, one of them being that instead of singing "son vergin vezzosa" (I am a charming virgin), she sang "son vergin viziosa" (I am a vicious virgin).
