Chapter Five
THE THREE “Cs”: CARUSO, CHALIAPIN, AND CALLAS
Enrico Caruso (1873–1921)
Enrico Caruso is the artist whose very name conjures up the image of great singing. Caruso holds a unique place in the history of singing. Like Mattia Battistini and Fernando De Lucia, he spanned the era during which the repertoire of Bel Canto was expanded into Verismo, but his sound was something new. When asked the requirements for becoming a great singer, Caruso replied: “A big chest, a big mouth, ninety percent memory, ten percent intelligence, lots of hard work and something in the heart.”1 It is the “something in the heart” that illuminates every recording that he ever made and many accounts by his colleagues and audiences use the adjective “golden” to describe the tone that he poured forth so unstintingly.
Enrico (born Errico) Caruso was born on February 25, 1873 in a poor neighborhood in Naples. He was the third of seven children, his older two brothers having died at the ages of two and seven. He was called Carusiello because of his voice, the finest boy contralto in Naples. After his beloved mother Anna died when he was twelve, he defied his father and resolved to devote himself to a life of music.
Caruso’s first teacher was named Vergine and did not appreciate the young tenor’s voice at all. He drew up a contract to teach the boy in exchange for twenty-five percent of all earnings for the first five years of actual singing! This contract sounds like something from Marcello’s satire Il teatro alla moda of 1720. Caruso succeeded in breaking this villainous agreement in court, eight years later. Caruso’s voice kept breaking when he sang over A. He was called “the glass voiced tenor.” My guess is that he had not learned the passaggio and control of the mixed and vowel registers. He then sought out another teacher (or coach), the conductor Vincenzo Lombardi, who helped him to find his top voice.
Figure 5.1 Enrico Caruso as Samson in Sain-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila.
Enrico Caruso’s first leading role was in 1895 in a little opera called L’amico Francesco by one Mario Morelli, a wealthy amateur. After a short stint in the army, Caruso began his career in standard repertoire in Faust and Cavalleria rusticana in Caserta. From there he went to the Teatro Bellini in Naples, where he sang his first Duke in Rigoletto and La traviata. In Cairo, at the Ezbekieh Gardens, he sang in Lucia di Lammermoor, La Gioconda, and Manon Lecaut for the first times. He then went to the Teatro Mercadante in Naples and added Teobaldo in Bellini’s I Capuleti ed i Montecchi. He was sometimes required to sing two operas in a single day; his voice still cracked, but he did not seem the worse for the wear. His first La Sonnambula was sung in 1896 in Trapani. Next came Salerno, where Vincenzo Lombardi was chief conductor and impresario. Together they worked out Caruso’s glorious top voice. In quick succession he added four new standard major parts—Don Jose, Fernando in La Favorita, Arturo in I puritani, and Caruso’s signature role, Canio. In 1897 in Livorno he sang his first Rodolfo. Next came Milan, not at La Scala, but at the smaller Teatro Lirico. There, he learned Massenet’s La Navarrese (in Italian) in five days. He also created Federico in the world premieres of L’Arlesiana by Cilea, Vito in Il voto by Giordano, and Hedda by Le Borne at the Lirico. Caruso then added Marcello in Leoncavallo’s La Bohème, Nadir in I pescatori di perle (Les pêcheurs de perles) by Bizet, as well as Faust in Boito’s Mefistofele, and Jean in Sapho by Gounod.
Figure 5.2. Enrico Caruso as Radames in Verdi’s Aida.
Giordano chose Enrico Caruso for the world premiere of Fedora on November 17, 1898 at the Lirico, and news of his great success spread throughout the opera world. From that time forward, his career was, in the words of The New York Times, “a long crescendo.” Caruso himself recounted: “After that night, the contracts descended on me like a heavy rainstorm.” The young tenor had only been singing for three years and at this point he had sung thirty-one major roles, including six world premieres. His education probably added up to no more than a year in school, but, like many another autodidact, he always attributed his success to “Work, work, and more work.” He shared this philosophy with another genius, Albert Einstein.
Caruso added Aida, Un ballo in maschera, and Maria di Rohan in St. Petersburg, where he sang with Tetrazzini and the great Battistini. The road to success had a few bumps. In 1900, in Rome, he was contracted to sing Tosca, a new opera by Puccini. For some reason never explained, Puccini decided on another tenor for the premiere. A short time later, Puccini heard Caruso as Mario and declared that he had never heard the part sung better.
A little known fact is that Caruso sang three performances of Lohengrin in Buenos Aires under Toscanini’s direction. James Huneker, the critic, later stated, “What a Lohengrin he would have been, what a Parsifal, yes, even a Tristan! He knew every note of these roles. Once for my delectation he hummed the plaintive measures of the dying Tristan. Tears came to my eyes, so penetratingly sweet was his tone, so pathetic his phrasing.”2
Under Toscanini’s direction, Caruso scored a triumph at La Scala in 1901 in a lyric role that he sang until the end of his life—Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore. Another curiosity was his appearance in the lyric role of Ottavio in Don Giovanni at Covent Garden in 1902. A setback occurred in 1902, at the San Carlo in Naples, where he appeared in L’elisir and Manon. The Naples sicofanti, who worshipped at the shrine of Fernando DeLucia, were intent on putting down the newcomer, and Caruso faced an ocean of whistles and catcalls in his own hometown. He vowed never to return again except to eat a plate of spaghetti. He was as good as his word, but, in a twist of fate, he did return to Naples to die. Fernando de Lucia, his eyes full of tears, was the soloist at the funeral.
After Covent Garden in 1902, Caruso returned to the Lirico, where he created Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur. Enrico Caruso’s debut at The Metropolitan Opera was in Rigoletto on opening night, November 23, 1903, with Antonio Scotti and Marcella Sembrich. In that first season, he also sang in Aida, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, La Bohéme, I pagliacci, La traviaia, Lucia di Lammermoor, and L’elisir d’amore. Caruso’s debut did not create a great stir. The critics complained (as critics invariably do) about his “tiresome Italian affectations” and yearned for Jean de Reszke’s elegance and suave style. Only when the great de Reszke himself stood in his box and publicly applauded the new tenor was Caruso finally appreciated for what he was—the greatest singer of modern times.
Enrico Caruso sang 832 performances at the Met, including 17 opening nights—a record only recently exceeded by Placido Domingo. We tend to think of the Met as his home theater, and it was, but he sang all over the world, especially in Germany. The phonograph probably had as much to do with establishing the universal appeal of Enrico Caruso as the artist himself. During the millennium celebration of 2000, Enrico Caruso was counted among the 100 most influential people of the millennium.
Figure 5.3. Feodor Chaliapin as Boris in Boris Godounov by Mussorgsky.
Feodor Chaliapin (1873–1938)
On March 16, 1901, Caruso appeared in Mefistophele at La Scala under Toscanini’s direction. The title role was sung by a young Russian bass who was destined to have a most profound effect upon the art of operatic performance and, indeed, upon theater in general. His name was Feodor Ivanovitch Chaliapin. Titta Ruffo, when asked about the greatest artists with whom he had sung exclaimed, “Greatest artists? I know famous artists, but there is only one greatest artist: Chaliapin. He is the greatest, unique, glowing talent. A genius! Chaliapin, only him.”3
The story of how an artist turns the bitter pain and misery of a deprived childhood into greatness has been told so often that it sometimes seems to be the norm rather than the exception, but Chaliapin’s story was even more desperate than usual. He was born in Kazan, on February 1st, 1873, into a moujik (peasant) family, with all the lack of opportunity that such a station in life entailed in Tsarist Russia. His family life was like something out of Boris Godounov; he always felt a kinship with Varlaam, the drunken peasant lout. This connection to the vast majority of mankind became the basis for his dramatic art, for he understood common people as well as kings, and they always understood him. Even after he became a world famous artist, his passport read, “Origin: Peasant.” He always strove for simplicity and truth, because he felt that only in truth was beauty to be found.
Chaliapin was taught to read by an older boy before he went to school. After a short time in school, he refused to return and was apprenticed to several artisans, but his habit of daydreaming and his low tolerance for boredom prevented him from learning a trade. Coarseness, drunkenness, fighting, poverty, unremitting toil, misfortune, and brutality surrounded him. He was beaten mercilessly daily and, when he returned home at thirteen, his drunken father terrorized him along with the rest of his family. Chaliapin remembered little else about his childhood except his mother’s singing of the mournful folk songs of the Russian people. Later, he often used these songs in his concert programs and recordings.
Once, tired from playing, he entered a church to get warm and encountered a group of boys singing choral music from score. He had never encountered such a thing before and ventured to audition for the choir. He remained in the choir for nearly six years, and the experience became the major part of his musical education. Another experience that forever formed his character was that of attending a performance of a clown, Iachka, when he was eight years old. He was transfixed and remained for hours in the frozen snow, unable to tear himself away. He was the “class clown” during his brief career at school and enjoyed acting or “not being me,” as he put it. At twelve he saw real theater and, soon after, his first opera. He was enchanted with the drama in which realistic characters sang their speeches, and he soon began to make up speeches that he sang to his family and others. Not a bad way to train for the art of recitative!
The first theatrical work for the young Chaliapin was as an extra in dramas, and his first role was as a gendarme in a French melodrama. Paralyzed with fear, he could neither move nor speak. For his pains, he was beaten by the producer and fired. He never forgot the experience. He then joined the Semenev-Samarski Opera Company in the chorus and was given a small part in Moniuszko’s Halka to sing. He acquitted himself well and sang Ferrando in Il trovatore and The Stranger in Askold’s Tomb that first season. Then came a terrible period of privation during which he literally starved. He heard of the death of his mother, who had been reduced to begging, and he had no money to travel to her funeral. Years later he tried to find her grave but in vain. She had been buried in a pauper’s grave. He later said: “I was so poor that year that I could only eat every third day.” He found four kopecks clutched in the hand of a dead man who had fallen victim to cholera. He was thereby able to eat and travel to Tiflis (Tbilsi), where he secured an engagement to sing the Cardinal in La Juive, Valentine in Faust, and Oroviso in Norma. The latter was in Italian, a language then unknown to him.
Unfortunately the opera company went out of business, and Chaliapin was forced to seek employment as a railroad clerk. At the urging of his fellow clerks he went to sing for Dimitri Andreivitch Ousatov, a tenor and voice teacher. Ousatov, in the great tradition that talent instantly recognizes genius, took the boy in, gave him free voice lessons, and literally fed and clothed him. Often overlooked because of Chaliapin’s enormous theatrical talent was the fact that he was a superb singer. Ousatov himself was trained by a student of Garcia and initiated the young man into the art of singing. Chaliapin wrote:
He shaped my first serious idea of the theater, gave me an insight into the nature of music, refined my taste, and—most valuable of all, in my opinion—helped me to a clear understanding and interpretation of different kinds of music.
In addition to all this, he taught me, of course, all that singing masters usually teach. He pronounced the mystic words heard in every singing class. That is to say, he taught me how to control my vocal cords. Sound should, in fact, rest lightly but firmly on the breath and be able to run freely up and down, like the bow over the strings of the ’cello, for example. Just as the bow, caressing the string does not always produce a single note, but, thanks to its quick movement over all four strings brings out varied sounds, so the voice, making use of skillful breathing, should be able to produce different sounds with ease.4
Although only twenty years of age, Chaliapin sang the Miller in Rousalka, Méphistophélès in Faust, Tonio in I pagliacci, and eleven other bass parts while in Tiflis. The next year he was engaged for the Mariinsky Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg. He understood Bel Canto but was always drawn toward declamatory dramatic operas. However, despite his best efforts, he was in despair at ever finding himself artistically. He learned the part of Rouslan in Glinka’s Rouslan and Ludmilla in a fortnight, but it was not a success with the public and he was demoted to small parts. He was then, he said, a dismal failure as Count Robinson in Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto. He remembered this experience:
But misfortune is an excellent master. A budding artist, no matter in what province his art may lie, has very dangerous enemies to contend with, and these enemies are his admiring friends who congratulate him on his extraordinary talent. The deceptive glitter of premature success, compliments, bouquets, and the praises of pretty girls—these things soon cause the true fire to bum down to lifeless embers and ash.5
Then Chaliapin was given the opportunity to sing the Miller in the Mariinsky Theater and had an unexpected success, but he was still not satisfied. Then he met a famous actor, Viktorovich Mamont-Dalski, whose “sheer talent and debauchery,” he said, “made him the Russian counterpart of Kean.”6 Dalski asked him to sing the Miller’s aria. Then Dalski said:
“The intonations [inflections] by which you interpret your character are false. That explains the whole thing. You mutter the Miller’s reproaches and complaints to his daughter in the accents of a petty tradesman, although the Miller is a steady going peasant, the owner of a windmill and other property.”
I was cut to the quick by Dalski’s criticism. I immediately grasped the truth of what he said, and while I was ashamed of my unsuitable renderings, I was nevertheless glad that Dalski had given form to my confused ideas. Intonations—that was the essential. I was justified in my dissatisfaction with The Song of the Flea; the entire value of the song lay in the correctness of the intonations.
Now I understood why bel canto nearly always gives rise to boredom. I thought of singers I knew, with magnificent voices, so perfectly trained that at any moment they could sing piano or forte, but who nearly all sang notes to which the words were merely of secondary importance. In fact, so little stress was laid on the words that more often than not the audience could not make out a syllable of what they were supposed to be saying. Singers in this category sing in an agreeable manner; their voices never sound strained, and are produced effortlessly; but, should they have to sing several times in an evening, no one song would sound very different from any other. Love or hate—there is really nothing to distinguish them!7
Chaliapin began to spend his free time not at the opera, but at the theater, studying all the greatest Russian actors of his time. Sometimes one can learn more outside of one’s own discipline than within it. Chaliapin briefly thought of giving up opera for acting in straight drama, but realized that his heart was bound to the lyric stage.
After a successful season at the Mariinsky Chaliapin received an offer from Savva Mamontov, whose Moscow Private Opera was appearing at the Nizhni-Novgorod Fair in the summer of 1896. Mamontov was a wealthy businessman who was an authority on various artistic fields. He was not an artist, but his talent lay in stimulating creativity in others. For example, the Moscow Art Theater of Stanislavsky and Nemirovitch-Danchenko came directly out of Mamontov’s dramatic circle and the Private Opera. Mamontov also sponsored innovation in painting and stage design and the concept of integrated productions where all the elements of an opera—singing, acting, music direction, costume and set design, and stage direction—were fused into one coherent whole. In 1885 he had produced Russian operas with young, unknown casts that were models of innovation and beauty, but they were savaged by the critics and the public “stayed away in droves.” Mamontov was forced to import Italian casts and alternate Russian operas with Italian standard repertoire to survive. The exposure to great Italian singers such as Tamagno was very instructive to the young Russian singers, many of whom had little vocal training.
Mamontov allowed the young Chaliapin complete artistic freedom and guided him in the development of his, sometimes daring, artistic sensibilities. The young singer was especially influenced by painters and sculptors whose help he sought in his evolving conception of the visual aspect of his work. Feodor Chaliapin, like Caruso, became a master of caricature and used the art in the preparation of his roles. He also developed the art of character makeup, as well as gesture, posture, and plasticity of movement. In his three seasons with the Private Opera, Chaliapin sang nineteen different roles, fifteen of them new creations from the Russian repertory. In 1898 came the most momentous of all—Boris Godounov.
Chaliapin threw himself into preparation for what was to become his signature role. He based his conception on the original version by Mussorgsky, but Mamontov was presenting Rimsky-Korsakov’s arrangement of the opera, which was somewhat abridged. With Boris, Chaliapin put in place the method of working he applied to everything he did ever after. The basic principle was that study and analysis always preceded the work of creative imagination. He mastered the composer’s style and artistic intent. Like Callas, he analyzed every note in the score, even including each orchestral part. He enlisted the aid of an eminent historian, V.O. Kliuchevski, who remained his teacher, loyal friend, and inspiration.
The premiere of Boris came on December 12, 1898, and Chaliapin had an enormous success. But it was more than that. Russian opera, which the critics and the cognoscenti had disdained, was now accorded respect, and even veneration, from the public. Five days after the premiere of Boris, dissatisfied with the musical level of the Mamontov Company, Chaliapin signed a contract with the Bolshoi Opera. He was sad to leave the Private Opera where he had come of age artistically, but the Bolshoi offered a higher salary and unlimited resources in the production of opera. He had become a national treasure at the age of twenty-five. He had no less than thirty curtain calls on his first night at the Bolshoi. There were some that felt that he would be smothered at the Bolshoi by the dead hand of routine administered by uncaring and unknowing officials. He continued to search and refine his roles, especially Méphistophélès. The management, realizing that they had a new star, began to mount Russian works for him, such as Judith in 1900, Boris Godounov, The Maid of Pskov, Mozart and Salieri, and Cui’s A Feast in Time of Plague in 1901.
Giulio Gatti-Casazza, then director of La Scala, heard of the sensational new bass and, over many objections, hired him to sing Mefistofele by Boito in 1901. The cast included Caruso as Faust and Toscanini conducting. The work was new to Chaliapin and gave him much anxiety. He asked his good friend Sergei Rachmaninov to help him. The two worked hard for a month and a half and then, and only then, Chaliapin began to search for the character. When he arrived in Milan, he immediately established a friendship with Caruso: “He had a generous nature, Russian style, was exceptionally kind, sympathetic, and always glad to give unstinting help to his comrades in the difficult moments of their lives.”8
Toscanini was soon won over and allowed Chaliapin freedom in his interpretation. The premiere was a triumph for Chaliapin. Boito himself said, “Only now do I realize that I never had, up to this time, anything but poor devils.” Chaliapin’s triumph had meant a good deal more to European opera than the success of one individual. His methods of preparation, which fused acting, singing and declamation, established a new criterion for operatic performance. When he returned to Moscow, in the absence of any true leadership, he took on the role of stage director when he recreated Mefistofele and Boris. Unfortunately, he incurred the displeasure of his colleagues when he tried to instill in them the same artistic aims that he had acquired at such cost.
After 1901, with his great unprecedented success at home and triumph at La Scala, Chaliapin regularly sang in all the important cities of Europe—Milan, Rome, Monte Carlo, Orange, Berlin, and Paris. He was an especially important part of Sergei Diaghilev’s campaign to introduce Russian art to Paris starting in 1907. Others who participated in the venture were Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, and Artur Nikisch. He then journeyed to America, where he appeared in Mefistofele, Don Giovanni as Leporello, Faust, and II barbiere di Siviglia as Don Basilio. This first visit to America was short and unhappy for the artist. Many of the critics found him original, but vulgar and barbaric, especially his Mefistofele, which had been praised by the composer himself only six years before. The public, however, received him enthusiastically as usual.
He returned to Paris, where he was to premiere Boris Godounov for Diaghilev’s company. It was there that one of the most famous incidents of Chaliapin’s career occurred. Diaghilev, as usual, was totally disorganized. At the time of the invited dress rehearsal, the scenery and costumes had not arrived and Chaliapin was obliged to perform with no makeup or costume. The critics had their pencils sharpened. From the Coronation Scene on, although not understanding a single word, the audience was transfixed. In the Clock Scene, Chaliapin projected such an aura of fear and horror that members of the audience clambered up upon their seats to see what had driven him to such extremes of madness and terror.
He continued to travel for the next few years. In 1914 he visited London again, where he found knowledgeable critics and a discerning public, including King George V. But war clouds were gathering. All that he had known in Russia and Europe was swept away in a conflagration such as the world had never seen. The Russian army collapsed in 1917 and the Bolshevik revolution engulfed the country. At first, Chaliapin, with his popularity and peasant background, was allowed to proceed without interference from the Soviet authorities. He was even given the title Premiere Singer to the Soviet People. Soon, however, he and his family began to suffer all the hideous results of the upheaval. There were many ignorant, cruel, and uncouth communist leaders who were bent on destroying the cultural heritage of the country in the name of “progress.” For Chaliapin and his family, life became increasingly intolerable. Many of his friends and acquaintances disappeared into Soviet prisons.
He left Russia for good in 1922 and settled in Paris. The rest of his life was spent in contemplation of the tragic events that led to his separation from his beloved Russia and her suffering people. He was especially grieved when his friend Maxim Gorky turned on him and demanded his return to Russia. Chaliapin traveled the world over, giving concerts that were masterpieces of improvisation, for they were done with no printed program, just a book of words. He died in 1938 of leukemia, and crowds in Paris and all over the world mourned his passing. Feodor Ivanovitch Chaliapin was a lion who feared only one thing—that he would be forgotten! He shouldn’t have troubled himself.
Maria Callas (1923–1977)
In the middle part of the twentieth century, the feu sacré of Pasta and Malibran was passed to an American soprano who has achieved legendary status in a very short time—Maria Callas. Nicola Benois, who had a long career designing sets and costumes at La Scala, saw many artists come and go. He remarked, “Callas had something inimitable, something amazing, something other artists didn’t have—no matter how splendid their talents in other regards. I’ve seen only one other artist who could register such a range of expressions—Chaliapin. There were motives that stirred Callas that lesser mortals did not possess. Yes, she was truly divine.”9
Maria Callas almost single-handedly restored an entire repertoire to the world of opera. Her greatest qualities were those of the mind, for her understanding of the composer’s intentions was complete and her determination to succeed in bringing those intentions to life was an act of total commitment. Her secret was that she understood that all the inherent drama in opera is to be found in the music. Callas did not do research. She felt that the composer had already eliminated all extraneous detail and, for her, everything that she needed was in the score. The essence of greatness is simplicity. Like Chaliapin, she studied every aspect of the score before she attempted to sing it, and all her effects were musical. By this, I mean that each gesture, each expression, and each nuance of declamation came out of the music. Callas did not tear around the stage; on the contrary, she often stood perfectly still on the stage, making the drama come to her. To attain her lofty goals, she had to have the selfless cooperation of all her colleagues, and some that were less dedicated found her abrasive. On the other hand, Jon Vickers, who matched Callas in his devotion to the composer’s intentions, stated that he found her a joy to work with. Luchino Visconti, the great Italian film, theater, and opera director wrote:
Figure 5.4 Maria Callas in a rehearsal of Medea by Luigi Cherubini with Fedora Barbieri.
I have worked for years with actors in the theater and the cinema, with dancers and singers. I can only say Maria is possibly the most disciplined and professional material I have ever had the occasion to handle. Not only does she never ask for rehearsals to be cut down, she actually asks for more and works at them with the same intensity from beginning to end, giving everything she’s got, singing always at top voice, even when the director himself suggests she shouldn’t tire herself out and she need only indicate the vocal line. She’s so involved with the total outcome of a production she gets irritated when a colleague is late. If being a prima donna means anything different than that, then Callas is no prima donna.10”
Maria Callas breathed new life into faded old warhorses like Lucia, Il trovatore, La traviata, Cherubini’s Medea, and especially Norma. By scrupulously observing all markings of dynamics and tempo and by finding different vocal colors (chiaroscuro) for each of her characters, even for different parts of the same score, she found new shades of meaning usually ignored in the Bel Canto operas. For example, she highlighted Violetta’s spiritual journey by reflecting the character’s changing fortunes in changing timbres of voice. She also sang lighter characters like Gilda and Rosina, and slimmed down her opulent voice by the use of parallel registers—a technique she may have only understood intuitively. In the tradition of the true soprano sfogato, she was able to sing widely varied repertoire, which ranged from Rosina to Isolde. She stated that she found Isolde, Brünnhilde, and Kundry much easier to sing than Norma.
Essentially, Callas was the mistress of three completely different idioms—Bel Canto (including Verdi), Verismo, and Wagner. She brought to each a stubborn, uncompromising integrity. Nicola Rescigno, the conductor, has described her way of working. When she made up her mind to sing a phrase a certain way, she never gave up trying to execute it in the same manner, even though the effort sometimes cost her dearly and occasionally even failed. Because Maria Callas showed the way back to the art of Pasta, Malibran, Viardot, and Schröder-Devrient, she showed the way for the future great careers of Joan Sutherland, Monserrat Caballé, Marilyn Horne, and Beverly Sills.
Maria Callas was born Cecilia Sophia Anna Maria Kalogeropoulos, the third child of Evangelia and George, at the Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York on December 3, 1923. George shortened his surname to Callas soon after the family had emigrated from Greece. The birth of Maria was a disappointment to her mother, who had lost a son a few years earlier. The story of childhood insecurity driving an artist’s ambition is, by now, very familiar to us. Maria showed a talent for music at an early age and found the hope for a musical career the best way of getting her mother’s attention. Evangelia responded by becoming the quintessential “stage mother,” driving her daughter, over the objections of George. When Maria was thirteen, Evangelia packed her two daughters off to Athens, where the mother could pursue her ambitions in peace. Maria was fat, myopic, shy, and ungainly and was refused admittance to the Athens Conservatory. She was, however, accepted to the less prestigious National Conservatory by lying about her age. She won a prize there and sang her first operatic role—Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana. She was only fifteen.
Two years later, Maria auditioned again for the Athens Conservatory and this time was accepted. Elvira de Hidalgo (1892–1980), who, like the Callas family, was trapped in Athens by the war, became her teacher. Hidalgo had been an excellent coloratura soprano and, even though Maria was a natural dramatic soprano, she trained her pupil in Bel Canto traditional technique and scrupulous musicianship. Maria was an obsessive student. She was the first to arrive at the school in the morning and the last to leave in the evening. Thus began twenty years of total commitment to her career; nothing else mattered to her. Evangelia’s domination of her daughter’s career gave way to the guidance of Hidalgo, and mother and daughter gradually began an estrangement that was to last for life.
The professional career of Maria Callas began in 1941, when she stepped in for an ailing Tosca at the Athens Opera. She was only seventeen, but she was an instant success with audience and critics alike. The next summer she sang Tosca, not as a replacement, but as a leading singer under her own name. Callas remained in Athens until 1945, singing a variety of roles that included Fidelio, Santuzza, and Marta in Tiefland by D’Albert.
At the war’s end there was chaos and devastation all over Greece. The Athens Opera did not renew Maria’s contract because, they said, she had sung for German and Italian audiences as well as Greeks. She made a momentous decision; she decided to return to America. She was now also in charge of her own life. When she arrived she had a hundred dollars in her threadbare pocket. She soon made the rounds of auditions and was rejected by everyone, including agents, directors, fellow singers, and impresarios. Giovanni Martinelli heard her and suggested that she needed more study. All this rejection only made her more determined. Then the first event of the Callas legend occurred.
The Metropolitan Opera called and agreed to hear her. After the audition Edward Johnson offered her a contract for the 1946–1947 season on the spot. He asked her to sing Fidelio in English and Butterfly. At the time she was, in her estimation, too fat to sing the diminutive Butterfly and she did not want to do Fidelio in English. The girl who had been rejected out of hand by most of the New York opera establishment refused the Met’s contract, to the amazement and consternation of all around her. She was then engaged to sing Turandot in Chicago, but the collapse of the United States Opera Company prevented her from making her American debut. Then she auditioned for Giovanni Zenatello (1876–1949), the great Italian dramatic tenor, who was the director of the Verona Festival. Zenatello enthusiastically signed her to sing La Gioconda the following year. The rest, as they say, is history.
In Verona Callas met two men who were to exert indelible influences over her life—Giovanni Battista Meneghini, the industrialist who became her husband, and Tulio Serafin, the great conductor who became her artistic mentor. Then, at La Fenice under Serafin’s direction, the relatively inexperienced soprano took on Isolde, followed by Turandot—surely a fearsome combination for anyone. The successes at Venice were the turning point of her career. Offers came pouring in. She sang in many Italian cities and built up her repertoire. With Serafin she prepared her signature role, Norma, which premiered on November 30, 1948.
In January of 1949, in the midst of rehearsals and performances of Brünnhilde in Die Walküre, at Serafin’s urging she learned and premiered Elvira in I puritani in one week! This was surely one of the most astonishing events in the history of singing. Not only was this feat of learning impressive, but the switch from one of the most demanding of declamatory Wagnerian roles to the florid Bel Canto of the gentle Elvira would be impossible for almost any other artist. Thereafter, Maria Callas became known for the dramatic coloratura repertoire and, after 1949, began shedding the more declamatory roles such as Isolde, Aida, and Turandot. In 1951, Callas renewed her collaboration with Tulio Serafin on La traviata, which, with Tosca, became another of her signature roles. Antonio Ghiringhelli, the manager of La Scala, who had earlier taken a dislike to Callas, was finally forced to capitulate, and Maria made her debut in I Vespri Siciliani late in 1951. La Scala was to be her artistic home for the next ten years. There she collaborated in five new productions with Luchino Visconti—the third major artistic influence on her, after de Hidalgo and Serafin. Before her first encounter with Visconti and dissatisfied with her appearance in roles that should convey feminine fragility, Callas, employing her usual iron willpower, lost seventy pounds and remade herself in the image of Audrey Hepburn. The glamorous persona, so familiar to us today, was born. There are those who say that Callas’s vocal decline began with the rapid loss of weight.
After the blazing triumphs of the fifties that cost her so much, something had to give. Her career and personal life became a series of alarms and scandals. She began a disastrous love affair with Aristotle Onassis, one of the world’s richest men. Her appearances became less frequent, and finally her struggles were over. She died of heart failure in 1977 at only 53 years of age.
We can learn many lessons from Enrico Caruso, Feodor Chaliapin, and Maria Callas:
1. Genius or even talent cannot be learned.
2. There is no substitute for hard work.
3. Artistic integrity is not for sale.
4. Those in charge of the musical-artistic world do not necessarily know what they are doing.
5. Political machinations and intrigue are no substitute for talent.
TWENTIETH CENTURY MUSICAL DEVELOPMENTS
The twentieth century was an era that saw some of the most momentous changes in the history of singing. The virtuosi of the Age of Bel Canto have never been surpassed in technical facility, ornamentation, improvisation, and sheer musicality. Also, the limits of human power and endurance had been reached in the music dramas of Richard Wagner; no more could be expected from human beings along that line. To be sure, there have been many singers in the twentieth century that could hold their own with the singers of any era.
The list is long: Enrico Caruso, Rosa Ponselle, Titta Ruffo, Feodor Chaliapin, Beniamino Gigli, Kirsten Flagstad, Lauritz Melchior, Friedrich Schorr, Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Jussi Björling, Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Franco Corelli, Leontyne Price, Jon Vickers, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti, to name just a few.
Figure 5.5. Lauritz Melchior as Tristan in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.
With the exception of Caruso and Domingo, all of these singers, excellent though they may be, have essentially been curators in the “museum of opera,” for they have been singing a repertoire that is frozen in time. Puccini’s Turandot, written in 1921, is the last opera to find a place in the international standard repertoire. Most contemporary operas tend to have a brief vogue and then are heard no more. This is nothing new. Only a very few operas have stood the test of time, and libraries overflow with forgotten works, even by acknowledged masters of composition. The majority of these works were composed for festivals and special occasions; the composers had little sense of writing masterpieces for posterity or to change the world. Almost all were written in a melodic and harmonic idiom understood by the performers and the audiences. The composers, like Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, and even Wagner, really understood the singing voice because they were either singers themselves or had studied singing.
Throughout history, dissonance was used to portray chaos and disorder, not as an end in itself. But artists tend to reflect their times. The American Civil War was the beginning of an era of unprecedented horror, violence, and bloodshed. In such an atmosphere of decadence, it is not surprising that the singers in contemporary operas have been forced to shriek at an increasingly benumbed public in such works as Strauss’s Salome and Elektra, Busoni’s Doktor Faustus, Schoenberg’s Moses und Aaron, Wozzeck and Lulu by Alban Berg, Shostakovich’s The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, From the House of the Dead and Katya Kabanova by Janacek, and The Death of Klinghofer by John Adams. In the quest for truth, beauty, and love, in such works as these, truth may be served, but beauty and love are elusive.
NOTES
1. Henry Pleasants, The Great Singers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966) 296.
2. Francis Robinson, “A Long Crescendo” in A Century of Caruso (New York: The Metropolitan Opera Guild, 1975) 24.
3. Victor Borovsky, Chaliapin, A Critical Biography (New York: Knopf, 1988) 41.
4. Feodor Chaliapin, Man and Mask (New York: Knopf, 1932) 37–38.
5. Chaliapin, Man and Mask 53.
6. Edmund Kean (1787–1833), the greatest English tragedian and Shakespearean actor.
7. Chaliapin, Man and Mask 60.
8. Borovsky, Chaliapin 294.
9. John Ardoin and Gerald Fitzgerald, Callas (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1974) 125.
10. Ardoin and Fitzgerald, Callas 33.