Maria Callas was ‘greatest singing actress of century’

Press, 19 September 1977, Page 9

Maria Callas was ‘greatest singing actress of century’

NZPA Paris The opera world yesterday mourned the death of Maria Callas, the New York-born diva whose tempestuous stage presence was matched only by her real-life passion for the shipping tycoon, Aristotle Onassis. "She had become a truly legendary figure, possessing all the attributes of a great diva," said Mr John Tully, general manager of the Covent Garden Royal Opera House. “We have lost one of the truly great artists of our time.” The soprano, who was 53, died from a heart attack on Friday in her luxury Paris apartment. Miss Callas, plagued all her life by weight problems, had been resting in bed after suffering from low blood pressure. A French impresario, Michel Glotz, one of the first to reach the apartment, said she coPapsed on the bath-i room floor and a maid; helped her back to bed, “but! it was too late.” Opera singers, impresarios, and music lovers throughout the world mourned Miss Callas’s death and eulogised her as one of the greatest voices! ever to grace a stage. “Undoubtedly the greatest'

singing actress of this century’,” Harold Rosenthal, editor of “Opera.” the most influential magazine on the art. said in London. The Australian singer, Joan Sutherland, in Vancouver. British Columbia, . j said: “She gave me the injspiration to join her at the verv beginning of my career i land she never failed to entourage what ... I tried to ■do.” Many of those who knew i her also recalled the heartIbreak of her love for Onassis,

which flamed even after the, Greek magnate married j Jacqueline Kennedy in 1968. | The break with Onassis “had a big effect on her. It was a case of her musical life being subdued by her personal life. It w’as a great tragedy,” Rosenthal said. Miss Callas last appeared in public on December 8, 1973, in a concert at the Paris Opera, after eight years off the stage. A sell-out audience cheered wildly and brought her back for io curtain calls. But critics said the voice that once brought opera goers to tears had lost some of its brilliance. Miss Callas apparently agreed. She never sang in public again. Born Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Calogeropoulos in New York in 1923, she was the daughter of Greek immigrants who were divorced shortly afterwards. Returning to Greece, she began singing lessons at the age of eight and made her first appearance at 14 as Santuzza in Pietro Mascagni’s opera, “Cavalleria Rusticana,” in Athens Miss Callas and her j mother nearly starved during the World War II Nazi occupation of Greece, and' earned food by 1

singing opera arias for Axis troops. In 1949. she married an | Italian industrialist, Gio- i vanni Battista Meneghini, ■ whom she met in Verona when she fell from the stage and he rushed to her rescue. With Meneghini as her' impresario, Miss Callas was I finally allowed to appear as the lead soprano at La Scala when she slimmed down from 104 kg (more than 17 stone) to 77kg (just over 12 stone). “I created Callas,” Mr: Meneghini said after their I 1971 divorce. “And she repaid my love by stabbing me in the back.” It was Onassis who held j her undying love. Their; affair lasted until he died in; 1975 and captured headlines! around the world. When Onassis married Jacqueline Kennedy, Miss, Callas wrote: “First I lost my weight, then I lost my voice, and now I’ve lost Onassis.” It was with entrepreneurs that she earned her reputation as a temperamental prima donna, walking off stage in the midst of several performances and being fired by the New York, Vienna, and San Francisco operas l because of h’’ rages, |