Maria Callas Is Now “Queen Of The Opera”

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28385, 18 September 1957, Page 2

Maria Callas Is Now “Queen Of The Opera”

[By SUSAN VAUGHAN]

The prima donna, Maria Meneghini Callas, has gained a reputation as a woman with a fiery temperament. She is now better known as “the tigress.” Once, in New York, she is said to have had a male co-star dis-

longer than she did. And in the last few weeks she has walked out of a concert in Athens and given up her part in the Edinburgh Festival. f Few artists could afford to act with so imperial an air as Madame Callas. But then she is the Queen

of the Opera, and probably the greatest draw in the world of music today. Almost everywhere she appears the box offices sell out long before opening night. But it was not always so. Only 10 years ago, she was a nobody—almost destitute. Less than 20 years ago she was, she says, ugly and fat —a lonely bespectacled schoolgirl. Early Promise Maria Callas was born 33 years ago in New York, the daughter of a Greek chemist, and was winning prizes for singing while still at school. Then the family returned to Greece and, through the war years, lived in poverty At 19, she made her operatic debut. In 1946 she returned to the United States with a company that soon went bankrupt. Since then, in 10 hectic years/ she has risen to become prima donna of La Scala, Milan, and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. She has married an Italian millionaire and £lOOO for each performance. In the last four years she has shed nearly 6st and transformed -from an ungainly heavy-weight to an attractive woman of 9st lib. Today women envy her success as a slimmer almost as much as they admire her voice. But Maria Callas has no special diet to recommend—only the recipe of success. For she found that her weight decreased as her reputation increased. Fortunately for her health, she can scarcely become any more famous.