Maria Callas was born Cecilia Sophia Anna Maria Kalogeropoulos on
December 2, 1923, in New York, New York. She was the daughter of a
Greek couple, Evangelina Dimitriadis and George Kalogeropoulos, who had
arrived in America in August of 1923. When her mother moved back to
Greece in early 1937, Maria went along with her and shortly after began
training with Elvira de Hidalgo at the National Conservatory in Athens.
After three years of training, Maria made her professional stage
debut in November of 1940 at the National Lyric Theatre in Athens in
Suppé's operetta, Boccaccio. Her first success came in 1942 when she was asked to perform in Tosca at the Athens Opera. Soon after, she performed Fidelio, Tiefland, and Cavalleria Rusticana in Athens and returned to her birthplace, New York, in the hopes of starting a successful career in opera.
Her auditions had not been going well until she was asked to
audition for Edward Johnson, the General Manager of the Metropolitan
Opera. Johnson heard her and immediately offered her the leading roles
in two productions of the 1946/7 season: Beethoven's Fidelio and Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Maria, to Johnson's surprise, turned the roles down. She didn't want to sing Fidelio
in English and she felt that she was too heavy to portray the young,
fragile Butterfly. This story may just be a myth, though, since the Met
maintains Callas' audition was not a success and that she was never
offered a contract.
Maria was, however, able to find work. After an engagement in La Gioconda in Verona, she traveled to Venice to sing Brünnhilde in Die Walküre for the 1948/9 season with Tullio Serafin conducting. I Puritani
would be performed in Venice shortly after starring the Italian soprano
Margherita Carosio as Elvira. One night, Maria got tired of
Brünnhilde's Ho-jo-to-hos and began sight-reading Elvira's music. When
Serafin's wife heard Maria, she immediately called her husband and
requested that Maria sing for him also. She did just that but Maria did
not know that Carosio had fallen ill and that a replacement would be
needed. The following morning, Maria sang for the Musical Director of
the Opera House who decided that Maria would be the best choice as
Elvira. She was given one week to learn the entire opera, a week which
contained three performances of Die Walküre. After the first I Puritani
on January 19, 1949, Maria 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). Three months
after her success, she married Giovanni Battista Meneghini, a man almost
30 years older than Maria, on 21 April 1949, in the Chiesa dei
Filippini in Verona, Italy.
After her Elviras in Venice, Maria had become a major opera
celebrity in Italy but had still not been offered a role at La Scala in
Milan. Finally, Maria was offered the lead role in Verdi's Aïda
after Renata Tebaldi (who had been cast in the role) became unavailable.
Maria and Meneghini expected a huge triumph, but when Aïda
opened on April 12, 1950, she received a polite reception and lukewarm
reviews. It wasn't until 7 December 1950 that La Scala surrendered to
Maria Callas. She had opened the 1950/1 season with I Vespri Siciliani and was greeted with thunderous applause and enthusiastic reviews.
In July of 1952, Maria signed an exclusive recording contract with
Walter Legge, director of EMI. A few days after the contract was
signed, Legge and his wife, the great German soprano Elisabeth
Schwarzkopf, went to see Maria 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?"
November 17, 1955, was the day that established Maria's image as a tigress. She had just finished performing Madama Butterfly
at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and was backstage celebrating her
triumph. As the audience continued to applaud, Maria was approached by
Marshal Stanley Pringle, who presented Maria with a summons to court.
She was being sued by a former manager, Eddie Bagarozy, on behalf of a
1947 contract that named Bagarozy as Maria's sole representative.
Though the two had not been in contact for several years, Bagarozy
claimed that he was entitled to a percentage of Maria's fees and the
expenses he was supposed to have incurred on her behalf - a total of
$300,000. The case was settled out of court on 7 November 1957. The
terms were not made public.
Maria finally made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on 28 October 1956 as Norma in Bellini's Norma.
Unfortunately for Maria, Time magazine had done an interview with
Maria's mother, the woman Maria blamed for robbing her of her childhood.
Maria had last seen her mother in Mexico in 1950 and had vowed that
she would never meet or speak with her again (a promise she took with
her to her death). The Time article portrayed Maria as an ungrateful
daughter and the New York public reacted coldly when Maria's Met debut
came. In fact, the legendary soprano Zinka Milanov received more
applause when she took her seat than Maria 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 next time Maria made headlines was when she was scheduled to sing in a gala performance of Norma
at the Rome Opera House on 2 January 1958. The performance was to be
attended by Italy's president, Giovanni Gronchi and his wife.
Unfortunately, Maria had seen in the New Year by drinking champagne and
staying up very late at the fashionable Rome nightclub, Circolo degli
Sacchi. When Maria awoke, less than thirty-six hours before curtain-up,
her voice had gone. She couldn't even whisper, let alone sing. The
Opera House was informed that a replacement would be needed. There was
no understudy and a cancellation would have been disastrous. What
happened instead was worse than a disaster. Maria, against the orders
of her doctors, went on stage but it was clear from her first note that
her voice was in ruins. At the end of the first act, half the audience
jeered while the other half sat in shocked silence. Maria escaped
through a back exit and an announcement had to be made that the
performance simply could not go on. The public was furious but Maria
was relieved to receive a phone call from Signora Gronchi assuring her
that neither she nor her husband had been offended.
On 3 September 1959, Maria announced that she would be parting from
her husband. She began a 9 year love affair with Aristotle Onassis.
The couple was expected to marry but in the end, Aristotle married
Jackie Kennedy, John F. Kennedy's widow, on 20 October 1968. His death
on 15 March 1975, is considered to be one of the major factors behind
Maria's death.
In the meantime, Maria 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.
In May of 1965, Maria's voice once again became the subject of dispute. She was performing Norma
at the Paris Opera with Fiorenza Cossotto as Adalgisa. Cossotto knew
that Maria was exhausted and her voice was weak so Cossotto
intentionally held on to notes longer than Maria could. On the night of
the final Norma on 29 May, Maria was at her weakest. To make
things worse, Cossotto treated their big duet like a duel. At the end,
when the curtain came down, Maria collapsed and was carried unconscious
to her dressing room.
In June 1969, Maria began work on a film of Medea (not
Cherubini's opera or Euripide's tragedy but the myth of Medea) with Pier
Paolo Pasolini. She hardly sang but still worked very hard. So hard
that one day she fainted after running on a dry riverbed in the sun for a
particular shot. Unfortunately for Maria, the film was not a success.
By 1970, Maria's singing career had come to a quick halt. On May
25, she was rushed to the hospital and it was announced that she had
tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates. It seems
unlikely that she actually attempted suicide, though by this time she
was known to take more sleeping-tablets to find sleep and more
barbiturates to find peace.
In 1973, she began a comeback tour with Giuseppe di Stefano. For
the first time in eight years, Maria Callas was singing in public. It
was clear from the first concert in Hamburg on 25 October that the tour
would be an artistic disaster. Callas and di Stefano had as an
accompanist, Ivor Newton, who was well into his eighties. During the
tour, Newton began having dizzy spells in the street and fantasizing
about his death. He once said to Robert Sutherland, who was turning the
pages for Newton, "If I have a heart attack while Maria is singing a
high note, you are to push me off my stool and take over as though
nothing had happened." Maria refused to fire Newton, fearing that doing
so would probably kill him. Sutherland eventually took over as
accompanist when the tour travelled to the U.S. The final concert took
place on November 11, 1974, in the city of Sapporo in northern Japan.
That was the last place on earth that would hear Maria sing.
On 16 September 1977, Maria woke up late in her home in Paris. She
had breakfast in bed, then got up and started towards the bathroom.
There was a piercing pain in her left side and she collapsed. She was
put back into bed and drank some strong coffee. After failing to get a
hold of any medical help, they called Maria's butler's doctor who
started out immediately for Maria's residence. She was dead before he
arrived. Her funeral was held on September 20th. She was cremated and
her remains kept at the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris. In the
spring of 1979, the ashes were taken to Greece and were scattered in the
Aegean.
