This channel is the re-establishment of previous channels that have been sadly terminated.
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Maria Callas--soprano
Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI
? 1952/53/59
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"Anyone not yet familiar with Maria Callas, the face, the sound and the story of the opera singer, will soon be humming the tunes. A stirring chorus of films, live shows, exhibitions, even a new museum and a hologram show, are all vying to mark the centenary of the great soprano’s birth with the loudest fanfare.
Angelina Jolie is shooting Maria, a biopic from Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight, in which she plays the performer they once called La Divina, while in Greece, Callas’s homeland, a new museum devoted to the singer has just opened in Athens after 20 years of planning. The next few weeks also see the international publication of Diva, the new book about Callas written by British author Daisy Goodwin, and in Milan, the scene of many of the singer’s noted stage triumphs, a display of portraits opened on Thursday at the Gallerie d’Italia.
“Even someone who has never heard of Callas, if they look her up online singing the second act of Tosca, can see she was extraordinary, and not just for her singing but the way she plays the role,” said Goodwin. “Like Edith Piaf or Judy Garland, she endures because, while her voice is not syrupy, in it you can hear poignancy and meaning.”
Goodwin, who wrote the fictionalised 2016 book about Queen Victoria that altered popular assumptions about the young monarch and became the basis of a successful television series, is now determined to distinguish Callas the talent from the Callas of the newspaper headlines. It is important, she argues, that the stage performer emerges from all the myths and competing centenary stories about the star.
Marina Abramović in 7 Deaths Of Maria Callas.
Marina Abramović in 7 Deaths Of Maria Callas. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
“She had enormous artistic courage. Watching her being interviewed, it is clear how unfiltered she was, letting her emotions show,” said the author. “I decided to write a novel because I wanted to get away from all that’s been written in biographies and look at what it took to be a singer at that level. I tried to feel my way into her head.”
The star, who died in 1977 at 53, had a long affair with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who eventually married Jacqueline Kennedy, the US president’s widow. But, more significantly in Goodwin’s view, Callas is also credited with breathing new life into a staid operatic tradition. Although her name became a byword for the jet-set lifestyle and her dramatic personal life fed gossip columns, Goodwin argues these trappings should not overshadow her artistic reputation.
“Amazingly, Callas is still Warner Classics’ best selling artist,” said Goodwin. “And the reason she’s still such an icon is that, while she is a genius of course, she transformed opera. After her, there was no more what they used to call “park and bark”, where a singer would come on stage and simply stand still. She was a great actress and because of her voice she revived a whole repertoire of bel canto operas such as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena, each full of songs that it had been thought were too difficult.”guardian
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"Maria Callas, original name Maria Cecilia Sophia Anna Kalogeropoulos, (born December 2, 1923, New York, New York, U.S.-died September 16, 1977, Paris, France), American-born Greek operatic soprano who revived classical coloratura roles in the mid-20th century with her lyrical and dramatic versatility.
Callas was the daughter of Greek immigrants and early developed an interest in singing. Accompanied by her mother, she left the United States in 1937 to study at the Athens Conservatory with soprano Elvira de Hidalgo. She sang locally in Cavalleria rusticana and Boccaccio and returned to the United States in 1945.
Her career began in earnest in August 1947, when she appeared in Verona in La gioconda. Soon, under the tutoring of conductor Tullio Serafin, she made debuts in Venice, Turin, and Florence. In 1949 she first appeared in Rome, Buenos Aires, and Naples and in 1950 in Mexico City. Her powerful soprano voice, capable of sustaining both lyric and coloratura roles, was intensely dramatic; combined with her strong sense of theatre and her scrupulously high artistic standards, it took her quickly to the forefront of contemporary opera talent. Her abilities made possible the revival of 19th-century bel canto works, notably those of Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti, that had long been dropped from standard repertoires." britannica (edited)