Bachtrack top ten: Maria Callas

Opera singers have always achieved celebrity status. The fame of tenors like Enrico Caruso and Luciano Pavarotti stretched way beyond the confines of the opera house and into wider public consciousness, particularly via recordings. In the Baroque era, some castrati were so famous that they were known simply by their stage names: Farinelli, Senesino, Caffarelli. In the 20th century, we had the sopranos La Stupenda (Joan Sutherland) and La Superba (Montserrat Caballé), but none matched the acclaim of La Divina: Maria Callas. 

The Greek soprano – born Maria Kalogeropoulos in New York on 2nd December 1923 – was an operatic superstar, a diva whose flame burned brightly in the 1950s before burning out. She was as famous off-stage as on it, her private life splashed across newspaper front pages. She starred in the world’s great opera houses and made many recordings, although there is only one act of one role that was filmed – Act 2 of Tosca (see below). 

She had a distinctive soprano, grainy, with a characteristic vibrato, which divided opinion, and she received her fair share of brickbats from critics and audiences. Callas herself was philosophical about this. “Hissing from the gallery is part of the scene. It is a hazard of the battlefield. Opera is a battlefield and it must be accepted.” At her best, she was mesmerising, conveying a huge range of emotions through her vocal performances, taking operatic performance standards to a new level. “When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I’m slipping.”

Callas’ legacy was immense. She was largely responsible for the revival of interest in bel canto operas by Donizetti, Bellini and Cherubini, paving the way for singers like Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills. And the intensity of her acting, working with directors like Franco Zeffirelli and Luchino Visconti, was instrumental in consigning the “park and bark” school of opera production if not to the dustbin, then to the fringes. This playlist features Callas in ten of her most iconic roles. 

1Norma

Callas sang the role of the high priestess of the druids 89 times between 1948 and 1965, making the part her own. Her recording of the cavatina “Casta Diva” is legendary, appearing on film and television soundtracks. In it, Norma prays to the goddess of the moon, pleading for peace. 

2Lucia di Lammermoor

Callas made her role debut as Lucia in Mexico City, June 1952. The following year, she made her first complete opera recording for HMV/Columbia, which was also her first with Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi, and her mentor Tullio Serafin. Here she is in Lucia’s Mad Scene.

3Medea

In 1953, Callas made her debut in Medea, an intense opera by Cherubini, learning the title role in just a week. The vengeful Medea was a signature Callas role, which she sang with great intensity, including a performance at the Ancient Greek amphitheatre at Epidaurus. She was so closely associated with the role that she starred in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film, her only non-operatic acting role. 

4Tosca

What more needs to be said about Callas’ Tosca? She brought incredible drama to the role. It was the only opera she performed where there is any surviving film footage, when Act 2 from the (then) new Franco Zeffirelli production was broadcast live from Covent Garden in 1964. Watch her as Tito Gobbi’s Scarpia writes the safe conduct note and you can see the moment when she spots the knife and… you know what’s coming next. 

5Anna Bolena

Donizetti’s opera, the first of his “Tudor queens trilogy”, had long fallen out of favour when Callas performed it at La Scala in 1957. The role of Anna Bolena suited her dramatic talents and the production, directed by Visconti, was a huge success. Conductor Gianandrea Gavazzeni described it as “a complete revelation of what I have always felt should be the ideal collaboration between stage and music.” It was at a party given in her honour after the premiere that Callas was introduced to the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis; their affair consumed countless column inches. 

6La traviata

Apart from Norma, Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata was Callas’ most frequently performed role. She only made one studio recording (for Cetra, before she signed to Walter Legge at HMV), but there are countless live recordings in circulation. Perhaps the most famous was Visconti’s 1955 staging at La Scala, one of those legendary evenings where the stars aligned. Here she is in Act 2 with Ettore Bastianini’s Giorgio Germont, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini: 

7Macbeth

From one of Callas’ most frequent roles to one she only sang in a single run of performances: Lady Macbeth. It’s a dramatic role – the letter reading and aria here are fiery with plenty of attack – but her cabaletta displays acrobatic coloratura. 

8I puritani

Callas’ debut as Elvira in I puritani was not planned. Scheduled to sing Brünnhilde at La Fenice in 1949, she was drafted into Puritani, which was running at the same time, when Margherita Carosio became ill. Callas learnt the role in just eight days, coached by conductor and mentor Tullio Serafin, and she scored a triumph, alternating between the demands of Wagner and bel canto. “Even the most sceptical readily acknowledged the miracle that Callas performed,” reported the local newspaper. 

9La Gioconda

This was Callas’ first role in Italy, when she was cast at the Arena di Verona. Tullio Serafin was looking for a dramatic soprano when Callas auditioned for him. He was wowed by her: “amazing – so strong physically and spiritually; so certain of her future.” It was in Verona that Callas met Giovanni Battista Meneghini, a wealthy industrialist, who married her in 1949, assuming tyrannical control of her career until 1959, when the marriage was dissolved. 

10Aida

Aida was an important role early in Callas’ career (her final performance was in Verona, 1953). It was the role in which she made her La Scala debut in 1950, stepping in for an indisposed Renata Tebaldi. As a debut, it almost passed unnoticed, but attracted criticism of her weight. A few years later, Callas lost a dramatic amount of weight which, it is argued, contributed to a marked decline in her vocal quality. Callas herself stated, years later, “First I lost my weight, then I lost my voice and then I lost Onassis.”