Maria Callas, Commendatore OMRI[1] (/ˈkæləs/; Greek: Μαρία Κάλλας; December 2, 1923 –

September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano.[2] She was one of the most
renowned and influential operasingers of the 20th century. Many critics praised her bel
canto technique, wide-ranging voice and dramatic interpretations. Her repertoire ranged from
classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini and further, to the
works of Verdi and Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner. Her
musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina.
Born in New York City to Greek immigrant parents, she was raised by an overbearing mother
who had wanted a son. Maria received her musical education in Greece at age 13 and later
established her career in Italy. Forced to deal with the exigencies of 1940s wartime poverty
and with near-sightedness that left her nearly blind onstage, she endured struggles and
scandal over the course of her career. She turned herself from a heavy woman into a svelte
and glamorous one after a mid-career weight loss, which might have contributed to her vocal
decline and the premature end of her career.
The press exulted in publicizing Callas's temperamental behavior, her supposed
rivalry with Renata Tebaldiand her love affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
Although her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in
the popular press, her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her "the
Bible of opera"[3] and her influence so enduring that, in 2006, Opera News wrote of her: "Nearly
thirty years after her death, she's still the definition of the diva as artist—and still one of
classical music's best-selling vocalists."[4]

Contents

 1Early life
o 1.1Family life, childhood and move to Greece
o 1.2Deteriorating relationship with her mother
 2Education
 3Early operatic career in Greece
 4Main operatic career
o 4.1Italy, Meneghini, and Serafin
o 4.2I puritani and path to bel canto
o 4.3Important debuts
 5Weight loss
 6Voice
o 6.1The Callas sound
o 6.2Vocal category
o 6.3Vocal size and range
o 6.4Vocal registers
 7Artistry
o 7.1The musician
o 7.2The actress
o 7.3The artist
 8Callas–Tebaldi controversy
 9Vocal decline
o 9.1Fussi and Paolillo report
 10Scandals and later career
 11Onassis, final years, and death
o 11.1Estate
 12In popular culture
 13Repertoire
 14Notable recordings
 15References
 16Further reading
 17External links

Early life[edit]
Family life, childhood and move to Greece[edit]

The apartment house in Athens where Callas lived from 1937 to 1945
The name on Callas's New York birth certificate is Sophie Cecilia Kalos.[5] She was born at
Flower Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center), 1249 5th
Avenue, Manhattan, on December 2, 1923, to Greek parents, George Kalogeropoulos (c. 1881
– 1972) and Elmina Evangelia "Litsa" (née Demes; originally Dimitriadou; c. 1894 – 1982),
although she was christened Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos (Greek: Μαρία Άννα
Καικιλία Σοφία Καλογεροπούλου).[6] Callas's father had shortened the surname Kalogeropoulos
first to "Kalos" and subsequently to "Callas" in order to make it more manageable.[7]
George and Litsa were an ill-matched couple from the beginning; he was easy-going and
unambitious, with no interest in the arts, while his wife was vivacious and socially ambitious,
and had held dreams of a life in the arts for herself, which her middle-class parents had stifled
in her childhood and youth.[8] Litsa's father, Petros Dimitriadis (1852–1916), was in failing
health when Litsa introduced George to her family. Petros, distrustful of George, had warned
his daughter, "You will never be happy with him. If you marry this man, I will never be able to
help you". Litsa had ignored his warning, but soon realized that her father was right.[9] The
situation was aggravated by George's philandering and was improved neither by the birth of a
daughter, named Yakinthi (later called "Jackie"), in 1917 nor the birth of a son, named Vassilis,
in 1920. Vassilis's death from meningitis in the summer of 1922 dealt another blow to the
marriage. In 1923, after realizing that Litsa was pregnant again, George made the unilateral
decision to move his family to America, a decision which Yakinthi recalled was greeted with
Litsa "shouting hysterically" followed by George "slamming doors".[10] The family left for New
York in July 1923, moving first into an apartment in the heavily ethnic Greek neighborhood
of Astoria, Queens.
Litsa was convinced that her third child would be a boy; her disappointment at the birth of
another daughter was so great that she refused to even look at her new baby for four
days. [5] Maria was christened three years later at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy
Trinity in 1926.[11] When Maria was 4, George Callas opened his own pharmacy, settling the
family in Manhattan on 192nd Street in Washington Heights where Callas grew up. Around the
age of three, Maria's musical talent began to manifest itself, and after Litsa discovered that her
youngest daughter also had a voice, she began pressing "Mary" to sing. Callas later recalled, "I
was made to sing when I was only five, and I hated it."[12] George was unhappy with his wife
favoring their elder daughter, as well as the pressure put upon young Mary to sing and
perform[13] while Litsa was in turn increasingly embittered with George and his absences and
infidelity and often violently reviled him in front of their children.[14] The marriage continued to
deteriorate and in 1937 Evangelia decided to return to Athens with her two daughters.[15]

Deteriorating relationship with her mother[edit]

Callas's relationship with her mother continued to erode during the years in Greece, and in the
prime of her career, it became a matter of great public interest, especially after a 1956 cover
story in Time magazine which focused on this relationship and later, by Litsa's book My
Daughter – Maria Callas. In public, Callas blamed the strained relationship with Litsa on her
unhappy childhood spent singing and working at her mother's insistence, saying,
My sister was slim and beautiful and friendly, and my mother always preferred her. I was the
ugly duckling, fat and clumsy and unpopular. It is a cruel thing to make a child feel ugly and
unwanted... I'll never forgive her for taking my childhood away. During all the years I should
have been playing and growing up, I was singing or making money. Everything I did for them
was mostly good and everything they did to me was mostly bad.[16]
In 1957, she told Chicago radio host Norman Ross Jr., "There must be a law against forcing
children to perform at an early age. Children should have a wonderful childhood. They should
not be given too much responsibility."[17]
Biographer Nicholas Petsalis-Diomidis [el] asserts that Litsa's hateful treatment of George in
front of their young children led to resentment and dislike on Callas's part.[18] According to both
Callas's husband and her close friend Giulietta Simionato, Callas related to them that her
mother, who did not work, pressed her to "go out with various men", mainly Italian and German
soldiers, to bring home money and food during the Axis occupation of Greece during World
War II. Simionato was convinced that Callas "managed to remain untouched", but Callas never
forgave her mother for what she perceived as a kind of prostitution forced on her by her
mother.[19] Litsa herself, beginning in New York and continuing in Athens, had adopted a
questionable lifestyle, that included not only pushing her daughters into degrading situations to
support her financially but also entertaining Italian and German soldiers herself during the Axis
occupation.[20] In an attempt to patch things up with her mother, Callas took Litsa along on her
first visit to Mexico in 1950, but this only reawakened the old frictions and resentments, and
after leaving Mexico, the two never met again. After a series of angry and accusatory letters
from Litsa lambasting Callas's father and husband, Callas ceased communication with her
mother altogether.[21]

Education[edit]
Callas received her musical education in Athens. Initially, her mother tried to enroll her at the
prestigious Athens Conservatoire, without success. At the audition, her voice, still untrained,
failed to impress, while the conservatoire's director Filoktitis Oikonomidis [el] refused to accept
her without her satisfying the theoretic prerequisites (solfege). In the summer of 1937, her
mother visited Maria Trivella at the younger Greek National Conservatoire, asking her to take
Mary, as she was then called, as a student for a modest fee. In 1957, Trivella recalled her
impression of "Mary, a very plump young girl, wearing big glasses for her myopia":
The tone of the voice was warm, lyrical, intense; it swirled and flared like a flame and filled the
air with melodious reverberations like a carillon. It was by any standards an amazing
phenomenon, or rather it was a great talent that needed control, technical training and strict
discipline in order to shine with all its brilliance.[22]
Trivella agreed to tutor Callas completely, waiving her tuition fees, but no sooner had Callas
started her formal lessons and vocal exercises than Trivella began to feel that Callas was not
a contralto, as she had been told, but a dramatic soprano. Subsequently, they began working
on raising the tessitura of her voice and to lighten its timbre.[22] Trivella recalled Callas as:
A model student. Fanatical, uncompromising, dedicated to her studies heart and soul. Her
progress was phenomenal. She studied five or six hours a day. ...Within six months, she was
singing the most difficult arias in the international opera repertoire with the utmost musicality.[22]
On April 11, 1938, in her public debut, Callas ended the recital of Trivella's class at the
Parnassos music hall with a duet from Tosca.[22] Callas recalled that Trivella:
had a French method, which was placing the voice in the nose, rather nasal... and I had the
problem of not having low chest tones, which is essential in bel canto... And that's where I
learned my chest tones.[23]
However, when interviewed by Pierre Desgraupes [fr] on the French program L'invitée du
dimanche, Callas attributed the development of her chest voice not to Trivella, but to her next
teacher, the Spanish coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo.[24]
Callas studied with Trivella for two years before her mother secured another audition at the
Athens Conservatoire with de Hidalgo. Callas auditioned with "Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster"
from Weber's Oberon. De Hidalgo recalled hearing "tempestuous, extravagant cascades of
sounds, as yet uncontrolled but full of drama and emotion".[22] She agreed to take her as a pupil
immediately, but Callas's mother asked de Hidalgo to wait for a year, as Callas would be
graduating from the National Conservatoire and could begin working. On April 2, 1939, Callas
undertook the part of Santuzza in a student production of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana at
the Greek National Opera at the Olympia Theatre, and in the fall of the same year she enrolled
at the Athens Conservatoire in Elvira de Hidalgo's class.[22]
In 1968, Callas told Lord Harewood,
De Hildalgo had the real great training, maybe even the last real training of the real bel canto.
As a young girl—thirteen years old—I was immediately thrown into her arms, meaning that I
learned the secrets, the ways of this bel canto, which of course as you well know, is not just
beautiful singing. It is a very hard training; it is a sort of a strait-jacket that you're supposed to
put on, whether you like it or not. You have to learn to read, to write, to form your sentences,
how far you can go, fall, hurt yourself, put yourself back on your feet continuously. De Hidalgo
had one method, which was the real bel canto way, where no matter how heavy a voice, it
should always be kept light, it should always be worked on in a flexible way, never to weigh it
down. It is a method of keeping the voice light and flexible and pushing the instrument into a
certain zone where it might not be too large in sound, but penetrating. And teaching the scales,
trills, all the bel canto embellishments, which is a whole vast language of its own.[23]
De Hidalgo later recalled Callas as "a phenomenon... She would listen to all my students,
sopranos, mezzos, tenors... She could do it all."[25] Callas herself said that she would go to
"the conservatoire at 10 in the morning and leave with the last pupil ... devouring music" for 10
hours a day. When asked by her teacher why she did this, her answer was that even "with the
least talented pupil, he can teach you something that you, the most talented, might not be able
to do."[26]
Early operatic career in Greece[edit]
After several appearances as a student, Callas began appearing in secondary roles at
the Greek National Opera. De Hidalgo was instrumental in securing roles for her, allowing
Callas to earn a small salary, which helped her and her family get through the difficult war
years.[22]
Callas made her professional debut in February 1941, in the small role of Beatrice in Franz von
Suppé's Boccaccio. Soprano Galatea Amaxopoulou, who sang in the chorus, later recalled,
"Even in rehearsal, Maria's fantastic performing ability had been obvious, and from then on, the
others started trying ways of preventing her from appearing."[22] Fellow singer Maria Alkeou
similarly recalled that the established sopranos Nafsika Galanou and Anna (Zozó)
Remmoundou "used to stand in the wings while [Callas] was singing and make remarks about
her, muttering, laughing, and point their fingers at her".[22]
Despite these hostilities, Callas managed to continue and made her debut in a leading role in
August 1942 as Tosca, going on to sing the role of Marta in Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland at the
Olympia Theatre. Callas's performance as Marta received glowing reviews. Critic Spanoudi
declared Callas "an extremely dynamic artist possessing the rarest dramatic and musical gifts",
and Vangelis Mangliveras evaluated Callas's performance for the weekly To Radiophonon:
The singer who took the part of Marta, that new star in the Greek firmament, with a matchless
depth of feeling, gave a theatrical interpretation well up to the standard of a tragic actress.
About her exceptional voice with its astonishing natural fluency, I do not wish to add anything
to the words of Alexandra Lalaouni: 'Kalogeropoulou is one of those God-given talents that one
can only marvel at.'[22]
Following these performances, even Callas's detractors began to refer to her as "The God-
Given".[22] Some time later, watching Callas rehearse Beethoven's Fidelio, erstwhile rival
soprano Anna Remoundou asked a colleague, "Could it be that there is something divine and
we haven't realized it?"[22]Following Tiefland, Callas sang the role of Santuzza in Cavalleria
rusticana again and followed it with O Protomastoras [el] (Manolis Kalomiris) at the
ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus theatre at the foot of the Acropolis.
During August and September 1944, Callas performed the role of Leonore in a Greek language
production of Fidelio, again at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. German critic Friedrich Herzog,
who witnessed the performances, declared Leonore Callas's "greatest triumph":[22]
When Maria Kaloyeropoulou's Leonore let her soprano soar out radiantly in the untrammelled
jubilation of the duet, she rose to the most sublime heights. ... Here she gave bud, blossom
and fruit to that harmony of sound that also ennobled the art of the prima donne.[22]
After the liberation of Greece, de Hidalgo advised Callas to establish herself in Italy. Callas
proceeded to give a series of concerts around Greece, and then, against her teacher's advice,
she returned to America to see her father and to further pursue her career. When she left
Greece on September 14, 1945, two months short of her 22nd birthday, Callas had given 56
performances in seven operas and had appeared in around 20 recitals.[22] Callas considered
her Greek career as the foundation of her musical and dramatic upbringing, saying, "When I
got to the big career, there were no surprises for me."[27]

Main operatic career[edit]

After returning to the United States and reuniting with her father in September 1945, Callas
made the round of auditions.[22] In December of that year, she auditioned for Edward Johnson,
general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, and was favorably received: "Exceptional voice—
ought to be heard very soon on stage".[22]
Callas maintained that the Met offered her Madama Butterfly and Fidelio, to be performed in
Philadelphia and sung in English, both of which she declined, feeling she was too fat
for Butterfly and did not like the idea of opera in English.[27] Although no written evidence of this
offer exists in the Met's records,[21] in a 1958 interview with the New York Post, Johnson
corroborated Callas's story: "We offered her a contract, but she didn't like it—because of the
contract, not because of the roles. She was right in turning it down—it was frankly a beginner's
contract."[22]

Italy, Meneghini, and Serafin[edit]

The Villa in Sirmione where Callas lived with Giovanni Battista Meneghini between 1950 and 1959
In 1946, Callas was engaged to re-open the opera house in Chicago as Turandot, but
the company folded before opening. Basso Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, who also was to star in this
opera, was aware that Tullio Serafin was looking for a dramatic soprano to cast as La
Gioconda at the Arena di Verona. He later recalled the young Callas as being "amazing—so
strong physically and spiritually; so certain of her future. I knew in a big outdoor theatre like
Verona's, this girl, with her courage and huge voice, would make a tremendous
impact."[28] Subsequently he recommended Callas to retired tenor and impresario Giovanni
Zenatello. During her audition, Zenatello became so excited that he jumped up and joined
Callas in the act 4 duet.[13] It was in this role that Callas made her Italian debut. Upon her arrival
in Verona, Callas met Giovanni Battista Meneghini [it], an older, wealthy industrialist, who
began courting her. They married in 1949, and he assumed control of her career until 1959,
when the marriage dissolved. It was Meneghini's love and support that gave Callas the time
needed to establish herself in Italy,[28] and throughout the prime of her career, she went by the
name of Maria Meneghini Callas.
After La Gioconda, Callas had no further offers, and when Serafin, looking for someone to
sing Isolde, called on her, she told him that she already knew the score, even though she had
looked at only the first act out of curiosity while at the conservatory.[27] She sight-read the
opera's second act for Serafin, who praised her for knowing the role so well, whereupon she
admitted to having bluffed and having sight-read the music. Even more impressed, Serafin
immediately cast her in the role.[27] Serafin thereafter served as Callas's mentor and supporter.
According to Lord Harewood, "Very few Italian conductors have had a more distinguished
career than Tullio Serafin, and perhaps none, apart from Toscanini, more influence".[26] In 1968,
Callas recalled that working with Serafin was the "really lucky" opportunity of her career,
because "he taught me that there must be an expression; that there must be a justification. He
taught me the depth of music, the justification of music. That's where I really really drank all I
could from this man".[23]

I puritani and path to bel canto[edit]

The great turning point in Callas's career occurred in Venice in 1949.[29] She was engaged to
sing the role of Brünnhilde in Die Walküre at the Teatro la Fenice, when Margherita Carosio,
who was engaged to sing Elvira in I puritani in the same theatre, fell ill. Unable to find a
replacement for Carosio, Serafin told Callas that she would be singing Elvira in six days; when
Callas protested that she not only did not know the role, but also had three more Brünnhildes
to sing, he told her "I guarantee that you can.".[26] Michael Scott's words, "the notion of any one
singer embracing music as divergent in its vocal demands as Wagner's Brünnhilde and Bellini's
Elvira in the same career would have been cause enough for surprise; but to attempt to essay
them both in the same season seemed like folie de grandeur".[21] Before the performance
actually took place, one incredulous critic snorted, "We hear that Serafin has agreed to
conduct I puritani with a dramatic soprano ... When can we expect a new edition of La
traviata with [baritone] Gino Bechi's Violetta?"[21] After the performance, one critic wrote, "Even
the most sceptical had to acknowledge the miracle that Maria Callas accomplished... the
flexibility of her limpid, beautifully poised voice, and her splendid high notes. Her interpretation
also has a humanity, warmth and expressiveness that one would search for in vain in the
fragile, pellucid coldness of other Elviras."[30] Franco Zeffirelli recalled, "What she did in Venice
was really incredible. You need to be familiar with opera to realize the size of her achievement.
It was as if someone asked Birgit Nilsson, who is famous for her great Wagnerian voice, to
substitute overnight for Beverly Sills, who is one of the great coloratura sopranos of our
time."[25][31][32]
Scott asserts that "Of all the many roles Callas undertook, it is doubtful if any had a more far-
reaching effect."[21] This initial foray into the bel canto repertoire changed the course of Callas's
career and set her on a path leading to Lucia di Lammermoor, La traviata, Armida, La
sonnambula, Il pirata, Il turco in Italia, Medea, and Anna Bolena, and reawakened interest in
the long-neglected operas of Cherubini, Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini.[25][28]
In the words of soprano Montserrat Caballé:
She opened a new door for us, for all the singers in the world, a door that had been closed.
Behind it was sleeping not only great music but great idea of interpretation. She has given us
the chance, those who follow her, to do things that were hardly possible before her. That I am
compared with Callas is something I never dared to dream. It is not right. I am much smaller
than Callas.[28]
As with I puritani, Callas learned and performed Cherubini's Medea, Giordano's Andrea
Chénier and Rossini's Armida on a few days' notice.[28][33]Throughout her career, Callas
displayed her vocal versatility in recitals that pitched dramatic soprano arias alongside
coloratura pieces, including in a 1952 RAI recital in which she opened with Lady Macbeth's
"letter scene", followed by the "Mad Scene" from Lucia di Lammermoor, then Abigaille's
treacherous recitative and aria from Nabucco, finishing with the "Bell Song"
from Lakmé capped by a ringing high E in alt (E6).[33]

Important debuts[edit]
Although by 1951, Callas had sung at all the major theatres in Italy, she had not yet made her
official debut at Italy's most prestigious opera house, Teatro alla Scala in Milan. According to
composer Gian Carlo Menotti, Callas had substituted for Renata Tebaldi in the role of Aida in
1950, and La Scala's general manager, Antonio Ghiringhelli, had taken an immediate dislike to
Callas.[25]
Menotti recalls that Ghiringhelli had promised him any singer he wanted for the premiere
of The Consul, but when he suggested Callas, Ghiringhelli said that he would never have
Callas at La Scala except as a guest artist. However, as Callas's fame grew, and especially
after her great success in I vespri siciliani in Florence, Ghiringhelli had to relent: Callas made
her official debut at La Scala in Verdi's I vespri siciliani on opening night in December 1951,
and this theatre became her artistic home throughout the 1950s.[25] La Scala mounted many
new productions specially for Callas by directors such as Herbert von Karajan, Margherita
Wallmann, Franco Zeffirelli and, most importantly, Luchino Visconti.[28] Visconti stated later that
he began directing opera only because of Callas,[34] and he directed her in lavish new
productions of La vestale, La traviata, La sonnambula, Anna Bolena and Iphigénie en Tauride.
Callas was notably instrumental in arranging Franco Corelli's debut at La Scala in 1954, where
he sang Licinio in Spontini's La vestale opposite Callas's Julia. The two had sung together for
the first time the year previously in Rome in a production of Norma. Anthony Tommasini wrote
that Corelli had "earned great respect from the fearsomely demanding Callas, who, in Mr
Corelli, finally had someone with whom she could act."[35] The two collaborated several more
times at La Scala, singing opposite each other in productions of Fedora (1956), Il pirata (1958)
and Poliuto (1960). Their partnership continued throughout the rest of Callas's career.[36]
The night of the day she married Meneghini in Verona, she sailed for Argentina to sing at
the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Callas made her South American debut in Buenos Aires on
May 20, 1949, during the European summer opera recess. Aida, Turandot and Norma roles
were directed by Tullio Serafin, supported by Mario Del Monaco, Fedora Barbieri and Nicola
Rossi-Lemeni. It was her only appearance on this world-renowned stage. Her debut in the
United States was five years later in Chicago in 1954, and "with the Callas Norma, Lyric Opera
of Chicago was born."[37]
Her Metropolitan Opera debut, opening the Met's seventy-second season on October 29,
1956, was again with Norma,[38] but was preceded with an unflattering cover story
in Time magazine, which rehashed all of the Callas clichés, including her temper, her
supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi and especially her difficult relationship with her
mother.[13][29] As she had done with Lyric Opera of Chicago, on November 21, 1957, Callas gave
a concert to inaugurate what then was billed as the Dallas Civic Opera, and helped establish
that company with her friends from Chicago, Lawrence Kelly and Nicola Rescigno.[39] She
further consolidated this company's standing when, in 1958, she gave "a towering performance
as Violetta in La traviata, and that same year, in her only American performances of Medea,
gave an interpretation of the title role worthy of Euripides."[40]
In 1958, a feud with Rudolf Bing led to Callas's Metropolitan Opera contract being cancelled.
Impresario Allen Oxenburg realised that this situation provided him with an opportunity for his
own company, the American Opera Society, and he accordingly approached her with a
contract to perform Imogene in Il pirata. She accepted and sang the role in a January 1959
performance that according to opera critic Allan Kozinn "quickly became legendary in operatic
circles".[41] Bing and Callas later reconciled their differences, and she returned to the house in
1965 to sing the title role in two performances as Tosca opposite Franco Corelli as
Cavaradossi for one performance (March 19, 1965) and Richard Tucker (March 25, 1965)
with Tito Gobbi as Scarpia for her final performances at the Met.[citation needed]
In 1952, she made her London debut at the Royal Opera House in Norma with veteran mezzo-
soprano Ebe Stignani as Adalgisa, a performance which survives on record and also features
the young Joan Sutherland in the small role of Clotilde.[33] Callas and the London public had
what she herself called "a love affair",[13] and she returned to the Royal Opera House in 1953,
1957, 1958, 1959, and 1964 to 1965.[28] It was at the Royal Opera House where, on July 5,
1965, Callas ended her stage career in the role of Tosca, in a production designed and
mounted for her by Franco Zeffirelli and featuring her friend and colleague Tito Gobbi.[28]

Weight loss[edit]
In the early years of her career, Callas was a heavy woman; in her own words, "Heavy—one
can say—yes I was; but I'm also a tall woman, 5' 8 1⁄2" (1.74 m), and I used to weigh no more
than 200 pounds (91 kilograms)."[27] Tito Gobbi relates that during a lunch break while
recording Lucia in Florence, Serafincommented to Callas that she was eating too much and
allowing her weight to become a problem. When she protested that she wasn't so heavy,
Gobbi suggested she should "put the matter to test" by stepping on the weighing machine
outside the restaurant. The result was "somewhat dismaying, and she became rather
silent."[42] In 1968, Callas told Edward Downes that during her initial performances
in Cherubini's Medea in May 1953, she realized that she needed a leaner face and figure to do
dramatic justice to this as well as the other roles she was undertaking. She adds,
I was getting so heavy that even my vocalizing was getting heavy. I was tiring myself, I was
perspiring too much, and I was really working too hard. And I wasn't really well, as in health; I
couldn't move freely. And then I was tired of playing a game, for instance playing this beautiful
young woman, and I was heavy and uncomfortable to move around. In any case, it was
uncomfortable and I didn't like it. So I felt now if I'm going to do things right—I've studied all my
life to put things right musically, so why don't I diet and put myself into a certain condition
where I'm presentable.[27]
During 1953 and early 1954, she lost almost 80 pounds (36 kg), turning herself into what
Rescigno called "possibly the most beautiful lady on the stage".[25]Sir Rudolf Bing, who
remembered Callas as being "monstrously fat" in 1951, stated that after the weight loss, Callas
was an "astonishing, svelte, striking woman" who "showed none of the signs one usually finds
in a fat woman who has lost weight: she looked as though she had been born to that slender
and graceful figure, and had always moved with that elegance."[43] Various rumors spread
regarding her weight loss method; one had her swallowing a tapeworm, while Rome's
Panatella Mills pasta company claimed she lost weight by eating their "physiologic pasta",
prompting Callas to file a lawsuit.[21]Callas stated that she lost the weight by eating a sensible
low-calorie diet of mainly salads and chicken.[27]
Some believe that the loss of body mass made it more difficult for her to support her voice,
triggering the vocal strain that became apparent later in the decade (see vocal decline), while
others believed the weight loss effected a newfound softness and femininity in her voice, as
well as a greater confidence as a person and performer.[28] Tito Gobbi said, "Now she was not
only supremely gifted both musically and dramatically—she was a beauty too. And her
awareness of this invested with fresh magic every role she undertook. What it eventually did to
her vocal and nervous stamina I am not prepared to say. I only assert that she blossomed into
an artist unique in her generation and outstanding in the whole range of vocal history."[42]

Voice[edit]
The Callas sound[edit]
Callas's voice was and remains controversial; it bothered and disturbed as many as it thrilled
and inspired.[28][33] Walter Legge stated that Callas possessed that most essential ingredient for
a great singer: an instantly recognizable voice.[44]
During "The Callas Debate", Italian critic Rodolfo Celletti stated, "The timbre of Callas's voice,
considered purely as sound, was essentially ugly: it was a thick sound, which gave the
impression of dryness, of aridity. It lacked those elements which, in a singer's jargon, are
described as velvet and varnish... yet I really believe that part of her appeal was precisely due
to this fact. Why? Because for all its natural lack of varnish, velvet and richness, this voice
could acquire such distinctive colours and timbres as to be unforgettable."[45] However, in his
review of Callas's 1951 live recording of I vespri siciliani, Ira Siff writes, "Accepted wisdom tells
us that Callas possessed, even early on, a flawed voice, unattractive by conventional
standards—an instrument that signaled from the beginning vocal problems to come. Yet listen
to her entrance in this performance and one encounters a rich, spinning sound, ravishing by
any standard, capable of delicate dynamic nuance. High notes are free of wobble, chest tones
unforced, and the middle register displays none of the "bottled" quality that became more and
more pronounced as Callas matured."[46]
Nicola Rossi-Lemeni relates that Callas's mentor Tullio Serafin used to refer to her as Una
grande vociaccia; he continues, "Vociaccia is a little bit pejorative—it means an ugly voice—
but grande means a big voice, a great voice. A great ugly voice, in a way."[47] Callas herself did
not like the sound of her own voice; in one of her last interviews, answering whether or not she
was able to listen to her own voice, she replies,
Yes, but I don't like it. I have to do it, but I don't like it at all because I don't like the kind of voice
I have. I really hate listening to myself! The first time I listened to a recording of my singing was
when we were recording San Giovanni Battista by Stradella in a church in Perugia in 1949.
They made me listen to the tape and I cried my eyes out. I wanted to stop everything, to give
up singing... Also now even though I don't like my voice, I've become able to accept it and to
be detached and objective about it so I can say, "Oh, that was really well sung," or "It was
nearly perfect."[48]
Carlo Maria Giulini has described the appeal of Callas's voice:
It is very difficult to speak of the voice of Callas. Her voice was a very special instrument.
Something happens sometimes with string instruments—violin, viola, cello—where the first
moment you listen to the sound of this instrument, the first feeling is a bit strange sometimes.
But after just a few minutes, when you get used to, when you become friends with this kind of
sound, then the sound becomes a magical quality. This was Callas.[25]
Vocal category[edit]
Callas's voice has been difficult to place in the modern vocal classification or Fach system,
especially since in her prime, her repertoire contained the heaviest dramatic soprano roles as
well as roles usually undertaken by the highest, lightest and most agile coloratura sopranos.
Regarding this versatility, Tullio Serafin said, "This woman can sing anything written for the
female voice".[13] Michael Scott argues that Callas's voice was a natural high soprano,[21]and
going by evidence of Callas's early recordings, Rosa Ponselle likewise felt that "At that stage of
its development, her voice was a pure but sizable dramatic coloratura—that is to say, a sizable
coloratura voice with dramatic capabilities, not the other way around."[49] On the other hand,
music critic John Ardoin has argued that Callas was the reincarnation of the 19th-
century soprano sfogato or "unlimited soprano", a throwback to Maria Malibran and Giuditta
Pasta, for whom many of the famous bel canto operas were written. He avers that like Pasta
and Malibran, Callas was a natural mezzo-soprano whose range was extended through
training and willpower, resulting in a voice which "lacked the homogeneous color and evenness
of scale once so prized in singing. There were unruly sections of their voices never fully under
control. Many who heard Pasta, for example, remarked that her uppermost notes seemed
produced by ventriloquism, a charge which would later be made against Callas".[28] Ardoin
points to the writings of Henry Chorley about Pasta which bear an uncanny resemblance to
descriptions of Callas:
There was a portion of the scale which differed from the rest in quality and remained to the last
'under a veil.' ...out of these uncouth materials she had to compose her instrument and then to
give it flexibility. Her studies to acquire execution must have been tremendous; but the
volubility and brilliancy, when acquired, gained a character of their own... There were a
breadth, an expressiveness in her roulades, an evenness and solidity in her shake, which
imparted to every passage a significance totally beyond the reach of lighter and more
spontaneous singers... The best of her audience were held in thrall, without being able to
analyze what made up the spell, what produced the effect—as soon as she opened her lips.[28]
Callas herself appears to have been in agreement not only with Ardoin's assertions that she
started as a natural mezzo-soprano, but also saw the similarities between herself
and Pasta and Malibran. In 1957, she described her early voice as: "The timbre was dark,
almost black—when I think of it, I think of thick molasses", and in 1968 she added, "They say I
was not a true soprano, I was rather toward a mezzo".[22] Regarding her ability to sing the
heaviest as well as the lightest roles, she told James Fleetwood,
It's study; it's Nature. I'm doing nothing special, you know. Even Lucia, Anna Bolena, Puritani,
all these operas were created for one type of soprano, the type that sang Norma, Fidelio, which
was Malibran of course. And a funny coincidence last year, I was singing Anna
Bolena and Sonnambula, same months and the same distance of time as Giuditta Pasta had
sung in the nineteenth century... So I'm really not doing anything extraordinary. You wouldn't
ask a pianist not to be able to play everything; he has to. This is Nature and also because I had
a wonderful teacher, the old kind of teaching methods... I was a very heavy voice, that is my
nature, a dark voice shall we call it, and I was always kept on the light side. She always trained
me to keep my voice limber.[50]
Vocal size and range[edit]

Callas's range in performance (highest and lowest notes both shown in red): from F-sharp below the
Middle C (green) to E-natural above the High C (blue)
Regarding the sheer size of Callas's instrument, Celletti says, "Her voice was penetrating. The
volume as such was average: neither small nor powerful. But the penetration, allied to this
incisive quality (which bordered on the ugly because it frequently contained an element of
harshness) ensured that her voice could be clearly heard anywhere in the
auditorium."[45]Rodolfo Celletti wrote that Callas had "a voluminous, penetrating, and dark
voice" (una voce voluminosa, squillante e di timbro scuro).[51] After her first performance of
Medea in 1953, the critic for Musical Courier wrote that "she displayed a vocal generosity that
was scarcely believable for its amplitude and resilience."[30] In a 1982 Opera Newsinterview
with Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge, Bonynge stated, "But before she slimmed down, I
mean this was such a colossal voice. It just poured out of her, the way Flagstad's did.... Callas
had a huge voice. When she and Stignani sang Norma, at the bottom of the range you could
barely tell who was who ... Oh it was colossal. And she took the big sound right up to the
top."[52] In his book, Michael Scott makes the distinction that whereas Callas's pre-1954 voice
was a "dramatic soprano with an exceptional top", after the weight loss, it became, as one
Chicago critic described the voice in Lucia,[30] a "huge soprano leggiero".[21]

In performance, Callas's vocal range was just short of three octaves, from F-sharp (F♯3) below
middle C (C4) heard in "Arrigo! Ah parli a un core" from I vespri siciliani to E-natural (E6) above
high C (C6), heard in the aria "Mercè, dilette amiche" in the final act of the same opera, as well
as in Rossini's Armidaand Lakmé's Bell Song. Whether or not Callas ever sang a high F-
natural in performance has been open to debate. After her June 11, 1951, concert in Florence,
Rock Ferris of Musical Courier said, "Her high E's and F's are taken full voice."[30] Although no
definite recording of Callas singing high Fs has surfaced, the presumed E-natural at the end of
Rossini's Armida—a poor-quality bootleg recording of uncertain pitch—has been referred to as
a high F by Italian musicologists and critics Eugenio Gara and Rodolfo Celletti.[45] Callas expert
Dr. Robert Seletsky, however, stated that since the finale of Armida is in the key of E, the final
note could not have been an F, as it would have been dissonant. Author Eve Ruggieri has
referred to the penultimate note in "Mercè, dilette amiche" from the 1951 Florence
performances of I vespri siciliani as a high F;[53] however, this claim is refuted by John Ardoin's
review of the live recording of the performance as well as by the review of the recording
in Opera News, both of which refer to the note as a high E-natural.[33][46]
In a 1969 French television interview with Pierre Desgraupes [fr] on the program L'invitée du
dimanche, Francesco Siciliani [it] speaks of Callas's voice going to high F (he also talked about
her lower register extending to C3), but within the same program, Callas's teacher, Elvira de
Hidalgo, speaks of the voice soaring to a high E-natural but does not mention a high F;
meanwhile, Callas herself remains silent on the subject, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with
either claim.[24]

Vocal registers[edit]
Callas's voice was noted for its three distinct registers: Her low or chest register was extremely
dark and almost baritonal in power, and she used this part of her voice for dramatic effect,
often going into this register much higher on the scale than most sopranos.[44][45] Her middle
register had a peculiar and highly personal sound—"part oboe, part clarinet", as Claudia
Cassidy described it[28]—and was noted for its veiled or "bottled" sound, as if she were singing
into a jug.[44] Walter Legge, husband of diva Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, attributed this sound to the
"extraordinary formation of her upper palate, shaped like a Gothic arch, not the Romanesque
arch of the normal mouth".[44]
The upper register was ample and bright, with an impressive extension above high C, which—
in contrast to the light flute-like sound of the typical coloratura, "she would attack these notes
with more vehemence and power—quite differently therefore, from the very delicate, cautious,
'white' approach of the light sopranos."[45] Legge adds, "Even in the most difficult fioriture there
were no musical or technical difficulties in this part of the voice which she could not execute
with astonishing, unostentatious ease. Her chromatic runs, particularly downwards, were
beautifully smooth and staccatos almost unfailingly accurate, even in the trickiest intervals.
There is hardly a bar in the whole range of nineteenth-century music for high soprano that
seriously tested her powers."[44] And as she demonstrated in the finale of La sonnambula on the
commercial EMI set and the live recording from Cologne, she was able to execute
a diminuendo on the stratospheric high E-flat, which Scott describes as "a feat unrivaled in the
history of the gramophone."[21]
Regarding Callas's soft singing, Celletti says, "In these soft passages, Callas seemed to use
another voice altogether, because it acquired a great sweetness. Whether in her florid singing
or in her canto spianato, that is, in long held notes without ornamentation, her mezza-
voce could achieve such moving sweetness that the sound seemed to come from on high ... I
don't know, it seemed to come from the skylight of La Scala."[45]
This combination of size, weight, range and agility was a source of amazement to Callas's own
contemporaries. One of the choristers present at her La Scala debut in I vespri
siciliani recalled, "My God! She came on stage sounding like our deepest contralto, Cloe Elmo.
And before the evening was over, she took a high E-flat. And it was twice as strong as Toti Dal
Monte's!"[28] In the same vein, mezzo-soprano Giulietta Simionato said: "The first time we sang
together was in Mexico in 1950, where she sang the top E-flat in the second-act finale of Aida.
I can still remember the effect of that note in the opera house—it was like a star!"[54] For Italian
soprano Renata Tebaldi, "the most fantastic thing was the possibility for her to sing the
soprano coloratura with this bigvoice! This was something really
special. Fantastic absolutely!"[25]
Callas's vocal registers, however, were not seamlessly joined; Walter Legge writes,
"Unfortunately, it was only in quick music, particularly descending scales, that she completely
mastered the art of joining the three almost incompatible voices into one unified whole, but until
about 1960, she disguised those audible gear changes with cunning skill."[44] Rodolfo
Celletti states,
In certain areas of her range her voice also possessed a guttural quality. This would occur in
the most delicate and troublesome areas of a soprano's voice—for instance where the lower
and middle registers merge, between G and A. I would go so far as to say that here her voice
had such resonances as to make one think at times of a ventriloquist ... or else the voice could
sound as though it were resonating in a rubber tube. There was another troublesome spot ...
between the middle and upper registers. Here, too, around the treble F and G, there was often
something in the sound itself which was not quite right, as though the voice were not
functioning properly.[45]
As to whether these troublesome spots were due to the nature of the voice itself or to technical
deficiencies, Celletti says: "Even if, when passing from one register to another, Callas
produced an unpleasant sound, the technique she used for these transitions was
perfect."[45] Musicologist and critic Fedele D'Amico [it] adds, "Callas's 'faults' were in the voice
and not in the singer; they are so to speak, faults of departure but not of arrival. This is
precisely Celletti's distinction between the natural quality of the voice and the technique."[45] In
2005, Ewa Podleś said of Callas, "Maybe she had three voices, maybe she had three ranges, I
don't know—I am a professional singer. Nothing disturbed me, nothing! I bought everything
that she offered me. Why? Because all of her voices, her registers, she used how they should
be used—just to tell us something!"[55]
Eugenio Gara states, "Much has been said about her voice, and no doubt the discussion will
continue. Certainly no one could in honesty deny the harsh or "squashed" sounds, nor the
wobble on the very high notes. These and others were precisely the accusations made at the
time against Pasta and Malibran, two geniuses of song (as they were then called), sublime, yet
imperfect. Both were brought to trial in their day. ... Yet few singers have made history in the
annals of opera as these two did."[45]

Artistry[edit]
Callas's own thoughts regarding music and singing can be found at Wikiquote.

The musician[edit]
Though adored by many opera enthusiasts, Callas was a controversial artist. While Callas was
the great singer often dismissed simply as an actress[56] she considered herself foremost a
musician, that is, the first instrument of the orchestra."[23] Grace Bumbry has stated, "If I
followed the musical score when she was singing, I would see every tempo marking, every
dynamic marking, everything being adhered to, and at the same time, it was not antiseptic; it
was something that was very beautiful and moving."[57] Victor de Sabata confided to Walter
Legge[when?], "If the public could understand, as we do, how deeply and utterly musical Callas is,
they would be stunned",[44] and Tullio Serafin assessed Callas's musicality as "extraordinary,
almost frightening."[58] Callas possessed an innate architectural sense of line-proportion[28] and
an uncanny feel for timing and for what one of her colleagues described as "a sense of the
rhythm within the rhythm".[22]
Regarding Callas's technical prowess, Celletti says, "We must not forget that she could tackle
the whole gamut of ornamentation: staccato, trills, half-trills, gruppetti, scales, etc."[45] D'Amico
adds, "The essential virtue of Callas's technique consists of supreme mastery of an
extraordinarily rich range of tone colour (that is, the fusion of dynamic range and timbre). And
such mastery means total freedom of choice in its use: not being a slave to one's abilities, but
rather, being able to use them at will as a means to an end."[45] While reviewing the many
recorded versions of "perhaps Verdi's ultimate challenge", the aria "D'amor sull'ali rosee"
from Il trovatore, Richard Dyer writes,
Callas articulates all of the trills, and she binds them into the line more expressively than
anyone else; they are not an ornament but a form of intensification. Part of the wonder in this
performance is the chiaroscuro through her tone—the other side of not singing full-out all the
way through. One of the vocal devices that create that chiaroscuro is a varying rate of vibrato;
another is her portamento, the way she connects the voice from note to note, phrase to phrase,
lifting and gliding. This is never a sloppy swoop, because its intention is as musically precise as
it is in great string playing. In this aria, Callas uses more portamento, and in greater variety,
than any other singer ... Callas is not creating "effects", as even her greatest rivals do. She
sees the aria as a whole, "as if in an aerial view", as Sviatoslav Richter's teacher observed of
his most famous pupil; simultaneously, she is on earth, standing in the courtyard of the palace
of Aliaferia, floating her voice to the tower where her lover lies imprisoned.[59]
In addition to her musical skills, Callas had a particular gift for language and the use of
language in music.[44] In recitatives, she always knew which word to emphasize and which
syllable in that word to bring out.[28] Michael Scott notes, "If we listen attentively, we note how
her perfect legato enables her to suggest by musical means even the exclamation marks and
commas of the text."[21] Technically, not only did she have the capacity to perform the most
difficult florid music effortlessly, but also she had the ability to use each ornament as an
expressive device rather than for mere fireworks.[55] Soprano Martina Arroyo states, "What
interested me most was how she gave the runs and the cadenzas words. That always floored
me. I always felt I heard her saying something—it was never just singing notes. That alone is
an art."[55] Walter Legge states that,