I did it to serve Callas, for one must serve a Callas.
--
Luchino Visconti commenting on his historic productions at La Scala, as quoted in Callas : The Art and the Life (1974) by John ArdoinMaria Callas
Callas, way above the rest. Tebaldi had a fantastic voice, like an angel's. But even when Callas's voice wasn't perfect, she had so much interpretation. Opera is storytelling. Feelings must be conveyed. Acting must be moving. And Callas had it all.
Maria Callas
Callas studied the text, the meaning of the words, and as a result, she became a diva. She became the Great Callas. Because she studied the character, she entered the mind of the character, and she brought the character to life onstage. Today, young singers don’t have this mindset. They don’t have the kind of technique that Callas had. ...Price, Milanov and Tebaldi had stupendous voices and great careers. [But] Callas, as a performer, as someone who expressed the real meaning of the words, was the best. The best. There is no doubt about this — not only for her sound, but because she studied so much. Callas is the diva. She is important to young singers, because she was a serious singer onstage, and she left a great legacy. I don’t know, though, if they can listen and learn from what she left on her recordings.
Maria Callas
[Hearing Callas in Norma in 1952] was a shock, a wonderful shock. You just got shivers up and down the spine. It was a bigger sound in those earlier performances, before she lost weight. I think she tried very hard to recreate the sort of “fatness” of the sound which she had when she was as fat as she was. But when she lost the weight, she couldn’t seem to sustain the great sound that she had made, and the body seemed to be too frail to support that sound that she was making. Oh, but it was oh so exciting. It was thrilling. I don’t think that anyone who heard Callas after 1955 really heard the Callas voice.
Maria Callas
She opened a new door for us, for all the singers in the world, a door that had been closed. Behind it was sleeping not only great music but great idea of interpretation. She has given us the chance, those who follow her, to do things that were hardly possible before her. That I am compared with Callas is something I never dared to dream. It is not right. I am much smaller than Callas.
Maria Callas
I once said to her “It must be a very enviable thing to be Maria Callas.” And she said, “No, it’s a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it’s a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand.” She couldn’t really explain what she did. It was all done by instinct. It was something embedded deep within her.
Maria Callas
Callas, Maria
Callender, James T.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z