brief candles: Maria Callas (1923-1977)

   Maria by Callas [videorecording (DVD)]. Sony Pictures Classics release; Elephant Doc, Petit Dragon and Unbeldi Productions present; a film by Tom Volf. Originally released as a motion picture in 2017.  Wide screen (16x9, 1.78:1). Special features: Q&A with director Tom Volf; trailers. Editing, Janice Jones; archive colorization, Samuel Francois-Steiniger; reader, Joyce DiDonato.
    Summary: A portrait of one of history's most extraordinarily talented women. Told through private letters, unpublished memoirs, performances and TV interviews, the film is the first to tell the life story of the legendary Greek-American opera singer completely in her own words with never-before-seen footage.

   Hamlet told us the play’s the thing, but when we turn our attentions to classical music, the composer is king. Not a perfect analogy perhaps, but the point is thus: that musical performers, no matter how gifted, might rightly be dubbed the art form’s second-tier talents. However … there are exceptions, and a handful of strictly performing musicians are deserving of the epithet genius, and on this very short and select list certainly belongs Maria Callas.

   One of the characteristics of genius is that it breaks new ground, allowing us to see – and hear – the world in different, more exciting ways. And indeed while Callas is, deservingly so, given a large amount of credit for the revival of interest in the bel canto repertoire, her influence on opera extended in ways far outside the purely musical.

   She was a great actress in an era when acting ability wasn’t the big draw, reminding us that the singer must look, and act, the part [1]. Moreover, she always insisted on high standards of production. For Callas, an opera would only work if it was conceived and presented as a total theatrical experience. But the sword cut both ways, with ironic results. In the past half century or so, better and more innovative productions have led to the primacy of the stage director, along with the subsequent demotion of singers and conductors.

   There was also Callas the pop culture phenomenon. The always immaculately coiffed and dressed diva came to embody the cult of glamour and celebrity as it blossomed in the post World War II years, though in fairness she’s probably a reflection of this trend, rather than causal factor.

 

   In any case the documentary Maria by Callas alternates between Callas the woman and Callas the artist, and sometimes we’re not sure where one ends and the other begins. There are lots of readings from her diary and personal correspondence, as well as interviews, plus of course arias (happily, presented in their entirety). Also rare video footage, much in, albeit sometimes colorized, color. Not so surprising, we learn that Callas was a complex woman: relentlessly pursued by pesky reporters and photographers, she suffered their unwanted attentions with grace and patience, most of the time anyway. On the other hand, for such an intensely private person, she was an eminently available interview subject.

   The chronology of Maria by Callas is a little vague. It jumps around a lot, and, most regrettable, there’s very little of her early years when she essayed even Wagner, and by all accounts, very well. The heaviness of those these years didn’t confine itself to repertoire; it’s said Callas shed up to eighty pounds to attain her svelte, echt-Fifties look (some sources say it was closer to sixty pounds).

   Musically a couple of numbers stand out: a soulful, lyric “Casta Diva” from a gala Paris performance, and even more so, the “Habanera” from Carmen (not sure of the venue here), in which she’s arguably more secure technically than almost anything else on the DVD. Her performance gives us a tantalizing glimpse of how strong a singer and how electric a performer Maria Callas really was. Her mezzo-like vocal timbre and fiery temperament seemed ready made for the role. Besides, she seems to be having just a plain good time singing the part, and it’s our loss she never performed Carmen onstage.

   Callas wasn’t an intellectual, but there’s a cerebral sheen to her answers to interviewers’ questions as she walks a fine line between the candid and the guarded, brilliantly so. And then there’s the accent, mid-Atlantic and always with a touch of the exotic. There’s one incident when Callas actually loses her cool. Predictably it’s when she goes into a tirade against Metropolitan Opera general manager Rudolf Bing over what she feels are the Met’s poor productions. Here we get a glimpse of La Callas at her tempestuous best, or is it worst? In either case, it only tends to humanize her and make her all the more attractive.

   Criticisms of Maria by Callas for its rather sketchy, patchy structure and relentlessly pro-Callas tone, especially the stacked deck, first-person only narration, are well taken. Thus I’ll defer to others to opine whether this is the best Callas documentary out there. But considered on its own merits, it’s a unique historical artifact for the rare footage, musical excerpts and best of all, Maria Callas on La Callas in her own words.

   Opera fans are an opinionated lot. Passions run high, and nothing gets an enthusiast’s back up like discussions of the ‘best’ singers, and no opera diva of the Twentieth Century ever inspired passions in the same way that Maria Callas did. Criticized, even vilified during her peak years in the mid and late Fifties, nonetheless even in her own lifetime the pendulum swung back and within a few years the Callas comeback was complete, as witnessed by the ecstatic reception of her return to the Met to sing Tosca, as well as the enthusiastic crowds during her final tour with tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano.

   Her posthumous reputation only increases and her legend continues to grow: today La Callas the musician and cultural phenomenon occupies a unique niche as quasi-divinity for devotees and even casual fans (not for nothing that she’s often referred to as La Divina). The documentary Maria by Callas is a unique and fitting tribute to its eminently worthy subject, and moreover serves to remind us that indeed Maria has gotten in the last word.

  [1] Callas was such a natural as an actress that we're the poorer that she only appeared in one feature film, Medea (1970).
 

Callas as Medea