“I will always be as difficult as necessary to achieve the best.”
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Maria Meneghini Callas
Maria Callas was an American and Greek soprano, and one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. 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 t…
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entertainment · American and Greek soprano (1923–1977) · opera singer · actor · also Maria Meneghini Callas, Maria Callas, La Divina, Maria Kalogeropoulou, Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos, Callas
Born 2 December 1923 · Died 16 September 1977 · Q128297
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2026· 3 entries
“the conservatoire at 10 in the morning and leave with the last pupil ... devouring music”
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Public attention spiked: 11,299 Wikipedia readers in one day, 7.3× the usual 1,554, with 1 article edits. Editors noted: Life and career Added information
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2010· 1 entry
Callas had dermatomyositis, a rare connective tissue disease that causes a failure of the muscles and ligaments, including the larynx
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2007· 1 entry
Awarded Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2007).
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2006· 2 entries
Shortly after her 135-pound (60 kg) weight loss after gastric bypass surgery, music critic Peter G
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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
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2002· 1 entry
Revealed he had diagnosed Callas with dermatomyositis in 1975
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1998· 1 entry
Twenty-one years after Callas's death
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1978· 1 entry
Tebaldi spoke warmly of her late colleague and summarized this rivalry:
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1977· 3 entries
Died 1977-09-16.
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“Opis: gdy Callas zaczęła tracić głos.”
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“Debe haber una ley que prohiba a los menores actuar en público a una temprana edad. Los niños deberían disfrutar de una niñez maravillosa. No se les debería imponer demasiada responsabilidad.”
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1969· 1 entry
The Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini cast Callas in her only non-operatic acting role, as the Greek mythological character of Medea, in his film by that name
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1968· 5 entries
Callas told Lord Harewood,
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“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 added, 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”
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When he left Callas for Jacqueline Kennedy
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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
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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 und
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1965· 2 entries
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
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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
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1964· 1 entry
Giving a rare view of Callas in performance and of her on-stage collaboration with Tito Gobbi, directed by Carlo Felice Cillario
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1963· 1 entry
Why she had not practiced her singing, and Callas responding that "I have been trying to fulfill my life as a woman
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1958· 4 entries
Callas and Rudolf Bing were in discussion about her season at the Met
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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
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A feud with general manager Rudolf Bing led to Callas's Metropolitan Opera contract being cancelled
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When the show was broadcast through Eurovision, I was skinny
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1957· 7 entries
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
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Described her early voice: "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"
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While still married to husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini, Callas was introduced to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis at a party given in her honor by Elsa Maxwell after a performance in Donizetti's Anna Bolena
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Told Chicago radio host Norman Ross Jr, "There must be a law against forcing children to perform at an early age
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Callas was starring as Amina in La sonnambula at the Edinburgh International Festival with the forces of La Scala
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Trivella recalled her impression of "Mary, a very plump young girl, wearing big glasses for her myopia":
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(her first performance at Covent Garden after the weight loss), critics again felt her voice had changed for the better, that it had now supposedly become a more precise instrument, with a new focus
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1956· 2 entries
Was again with Norma, but was preceded by 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 difficu
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Just before her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, Time ran a damaging cover story about Callas, with special attention paid to her difficult relationship with her mother and some unpleasant exchanges between the two
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1955· 1 entry
Callas was confronted by a process server who handed her papers about a lawsuit brought by Eddy Bagarozy, who claimed he was her agent
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1954· 4 entries
Claudia Cassidy wrote that "there is a slight unsteadiness in some of the sustained upper notes, but to me her voice is more beautiful in color, more even through the range, than it used to be"
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Further contributed to reduced physical support of her voice
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And "with the Callas Norma, Lyric Opera of Chicago was born
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Where he sang Licinio in Spontini's La vestale opposite Callas's Julia
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1953· 1 entry
The critic for Musical Courier wrote that "she displayed a vocal generosity that was scarcely believable for its amplitude and resilience
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1952· 1 entry
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 Clo
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1951· 1 entry
Tebaldi and Maria Callas were jointly booked for a vocal recital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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1950· 3 entries
Where she sang the top E-flat in the second-act finale of Aida
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But this only reawakened the old frictions and resentments, and after leaving Mexico, they never met again
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And La Scala's general manager, Antonio Ghiringhelli, had taken an immediate dislike to Callas
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1949· 1 entry
Which gave her automatic Italian citizenship, and he assumed control of her career until 1959, when the marriage dissolved
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1946· 2 entries
And 1947, prior to her Italian debut, felt that it was not the heavy roles that hurt Callas's voice, but the lighter ones
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Callas was engaged to re-open the opera house in Chicago as Turandot, but the company folded before opening
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1945· 1 entry
Two months short of her 22nd birthday, Callas had given 56 performances in seven operas and had appeared in around 20 recitals
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1939· 1 entry
Callas undertook the part of Santuzza in a student production of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana by the Greek National Opera at the Olympia Theatre, and that autumn she enrolled at the Athens Conservatoire in Elvira de H
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1938· 1 entry
In her public debut, Callas ended the recital of Trivella's class at the Parnassos music hall with a duet from Tosca
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1937· 1 entry
Litsa returned to Athens with her two daughters
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1926· 1 entry
At the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity
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1923· 5 entries
To Greek parents Elmina Evangelia "Litsa" (née Demes, originally Dimitriadou; c
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Born 1923-12-02.
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“s advice to her: When one wants to find a gesture, when you want to find how to act onstage, all you have to do is listen to the music. The composer has already seen to that. If you take the trouble to really listen with your Soul and with your Ears—and I say”
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After realizing that Litsa was pregnant again, George moved his family to the United States, a decision that Yakinthi recalled was greeted with Litsa "shouting hysterically" followed by George "slamming doors"
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She was born at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center) on December 2, 1923, to Greek parents Elmina Evangelia "Litsa" (née Demes, originally Dimitriadou; c. 1894–1982) and George Kalogeropoulos (c. 1881–1972).
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1917· 1 entry
Nor the birth of their son Vassilis, in 1920
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