Callas, Maria

(born Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulos), celebrated American soprano; b. N.Y., Dec. 3, 1923; d. Paris, Sept. 16, 1977. Callas's father was a Greek immigrant to the U.S. The family returned to Greece when she was 13. She studied voice at the Royal Academy of Music in Athens with the Spanish soprano Elvira de Hidalgo and made her debut in a school production of MASCAGNI'S CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA in 1938. Her first professional appearance was in a minor role at the Royal Opera in Athens when she was 16. She sang her first major role, Tosca, there in 1942.

Callas returned in 1945 to N.Y., where she auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera Company. She was offered a contract but decided to go to Italy, where she made her operatic debut in the title role in LA GIOCONDA in Verona in 1947.

Callas was encouraged in her career by the famous conductor TULLIO SERAFÍN, who engaged her to sing at various Italian productions. In 1951 she became a member of the famous opera company LA SCALA in Milan. She was handicapped by her excessive weight, but by a supreme effort of will she slimmed down from 210 to 135 pounds. With her now trim physique, coupled with her classic Greek profile and penetrating eyes, she made a striking impression on the stage. In the tragic role of Medea in CHERUBINI'S opera, she mesmerized the audience by her dramatic representation of pity and terror. Some critics faulted her vocal technique, but her power of interpretation was such that she was soon acknowledged as one of the greatest dramatic singers of the century.

Callas's professional and personal life was as tempestuous as that of any PRIMA DONNA of the bygone era. In 1949 she married the Italian industrialist G. B. Meneghini (d. 1981), who became her manager, but they separated 10 years later. Her romance with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis was a recurrent topic of sensational gossip. Given to outbursts of temper, she regularly made newspaper headlines when she walked off the stage following some disagreement or failed to appear altogether at scheduled performances. Yet her eventual return to the stage would be all the more eagerly welcomed by her legion of admirers.

Perhaps the peak of Callas's success came with her brilliant debut at the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. as Norma in 1956. Following a well-publicized disagreement with its management, she quit the company only to reach an uneasy truce with it to return as Violetta in LA TRAVIATA in 1958. That same year she left the company again, returning only in 1965 to sing Tosca before abandoning the operatic stage altogether. In 1971 she gave a seminar on opera at the Juilliard School of Music that was enthusiastically attended by students. This seminar was fictionalized in the play Master Class, a hit on Broadway in 1996. In 1974 she went on a concert tour with the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, but there was no possibility of a comeback.

Callas retired to Europe and died suddenly of a heart attack in her Paris apartment in 1977. Her body was cremated, and her ashes (after being stolen from the famed Paris cemetery Père Lachaise and later recovered) were scattered on the Aegean Sea.