Opera Singers

"Maria Callas remains an icon with an instantly recognizable voice. But she was also the first opera singer to be equipped with the ingredients of international celebrity: charisma, glamour, wealth, she had it all, together with the touches of scandal and tragedy that made her story so compelling. Since her time, every female opera singer has been measured against this powerful role model. ... Callas modernized our metier. Her life was a tireless creative search. She was one of the first to recognize the importance of being an actress as well as a singer, and was uncompromising in her belief that, in order to achieve a complete dramatic performance, all aspects of the operatic genre require equal attention. She was a pioneer in restoring forgotten repertoire and in exploring new ways of musical interpretation. To this day, I find that many of her exemplary recordings are astounding."

"I adored this lady, and I respected her work ethic. She always wanted to improve her understanding of a piece. "Casta Diva", [for instance] — what interested me most was how she gave the runs and the cadenzas words. That always floored me. I always felt I heard her saying something — it was never just singing notes. That alone is an art. It’s an art that you can try to achieve, but you can’t copy, because that’s just imitating without delving into [how she felt] about that particular fioritura. ... how many other artists since Callas have you heard and thought, "She sang gorgeously, but I never cried?""

"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."

"Yes, the woman could act. At the very moment she entered, you saw in full Aida, Anna Bolena, Gioconda, felt their eyes on you even before they uttered a sound. ... The gestures — so authentically antique, yet strangely devised entirely on her own — were completely equalized into her stylistics, with one set for the Greeks and Romans, another for post-Renaissance royalty, a third for more contemporary characters. Yet, all this was subsidiary to the heavy Kunst of developing the psychology of the roles under the supervision of the music, of singing the acting...."

"That is such a difficult question. There are times when certain people are blessed — and cursed — with an extraordinary gift, in which the gift is almost greater than the human being. Callas was one of these people. It was as if her own wishes, her life, her own happiness were all subservient to this incredible, incredible gift that she was given, this gift that reached out and taught us things about music that we knew very well, but showed us new things, things we never thought about, new possibilities. I think that is why singers admire her so. I think that’s why conductors admire her so. I know it’s why I admire her so. And she paid a tremendously difficult and expensive price for this career."

"Callas was superhuman. She was on a whole other plane. She really was a Diva — the goddess — and the rest of us are basically her handmaidens."

"From Callas, I learned to respect the music. It’s part of the attention to detail. Today, everything seems to me a bit homogenized. Puccini sounds like Handel which sounds like Bellini. Callas had this sense of style, whether it was learned or just innate."

"Callas was such an example of professionalism. One thinks of her as a flighty diva, which is the wrong thing to learn from her, and she wasn’t at all."

"I happen to think that Callas was the greatest singer of the 20th century. I feel that so many people have learned the wrong things from her, rather than the right things. She was a fabulous musician. When you listened to her, you could almost take dictation. All the dots were there. Anything that was wrong was because of the deterioration of the instrument over time. But usually musical things were not wrong. She has pitch problems and wobbles that came in later."

"I would not kill my enemies, but I will make them get down on their knees. I will, I can, I must."

"Serafin was] an extraordinary coach, sharp as a vecchio lupo [old wolfe]. He opened a world to me, showed me there was a reason for everything, that even fiorature and trills ... have a reason in the composer's mind, that they are the expression of the stato d'animo [state of mind] of the character — that is, the way he feels at the moment, the passing emotions that take hold of him. He would coach us for every little detail, every movement, every word, every breath. One of the things he told me — and this is the basis of bel canto — is never to attack a note from underneath or from above, but always to prepare it in the face. He taught me that pauses are often more important than the music. He explained that there was a rhythm — these are the things you get only from that man! — a measure for the human ear, and that if a note was too long, it was no good after a while. A fermata always must be measured, and if there are two fermate close to one another in the score, you ignore one of them. He taught me the proportions of recitative — how it is elastic, the proportions altering so slightly that only you can understand it. ... But in performance he left you on your own. "When I am in the pit, I am there to serve you, because I have to save my performance." he would say. We would look down and feel we had a friend there. He was helping you all the way. He would mouth all the words. If you were not well, he would speed up the tempo, and if you were in top form, he would slow it down to let you breathe, to give you room. He was breathing with you, living the music with you, loving it with you. It was elastic, growing, living."

"It takes a little more time to get into the role, but not very much more. In making a record you don't have the sense of projection over a distance as in an opera house. We have this microphone and this magnifies all details of a performance, all exaggerations. In the theater, you can get away with a very large, very grand phrase. For the microphone, you have to tone it down. It's the same as making a film, your gestures will be seen in close-up, so they cannot be exaggerated as they would be in a theater."

"Bel canto does not mean beautiful singing alone. It is, rather, the technique demanded by the composers of this style — Donizetti, Rossini, and Bellini. It is the same attitudes and demands of Mozart and Beethoven, for example, the same approach and the same technical difficulties faced by instrumentalists. You see, a musician is a musician. A singer is no different from an instrumentalist except that we have words. You don't excuse things in a singer you would not dream of excusing in a violinist or pianist. There is no excuse for not having a trill, for not doing the acciaccatura, for not having good scales. Look at your scores! There are technical things written there to be performed, and they must be performed whether you like it or not. How will you get out of a trill? How will you get out of scales when they are written there, staring you in the face? It is not enough to have a beautiful voice. What does that mean? When you interpret a role, you have to have a thousand colors to portray happiness, joy, sorrow, fear. How can you do this with only a beautiful voice? Even if you sing harshly sometimes, as I have frequently done, it is a necessity of expression. You have to do it, even if people will not understand. But in the long run they will, because you must persuade them of what you're doing."

"Don't talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I make the goddamn rules."

"What a lovely voice, but who cares?"

"What Tullio Serafin] said that impressed me was: "When one wants to find a gesture, when you want to find how to act on stage, all you have to do is listen to the music. The composer has already seen to that." If you take the trouble to really listen with your soul and with your ears — and I say soul and ears because the mind must work, but not too much also — you will find every gesture there. And it is all true, you know."

"I admire Tebaldi's tone; it's beautiful — also some beautiful phrasing. Sometimes, I actually wish I had her voice."

"The magic of a Callas is a quality few artists have, something special, something different. There are many very good artists, but very few who have that sixth sense, the additional, the plus quality. It is something which lifts them from the ground: they become like semi-gods. She had it. Nureyev has it, [Laurence] Olivier. But Olivier is also a case of an extremely rich knowledge of everything. He is completely coherent in his life, onstage. Whatever he does is part of a complete personality. Maria is a common girl behind the wings, but when she goes onstage, or even when she talks about her work or begins to hum a tune, she immediately assumes this additional quality. For me, Maria is always a miracle. you cannot understand or explain her. You can explain everything Olivier does because it is all part of a professional genius. But Maria can switch from nothing to everything, from earth to heaven. What is it this woman has? I don't know, but when that miracle happens, she is a new soul, a new entity."

"About Maria Callas, I am honestly practically devoid of words. And that must be the case when one comes up against a phenomenon that one simply can't explain, but whom one appreciates. Indeed, as far as I'm concerned, I've been in love with her for years. She is, I think without any doubt at all, (and I don't mind what letters come to me tomorrow) the greatest theatrical, musical artist of our time.... She has an enormous feeling for music. She has an enormous feeling for words. She has an enormous feeling for the dramatic situation. She can convey all those things to an audience in a way that practically no other artist alive today can do."

"The last great artist. When you think this woman was nearly blind, and often sang standing a good 150 feet from the podium. But her sensitivity! Even if she could not see, she sensed the music and always came in exactly with my downbeat. When we rehearsed, she was so precise, already note-perfect. ... For over thirty years, I was Arturo Toscanini's assistant, and from the very first rehearsal, he demanded every nuance from the orchestra, just as if it were a full performance. The piano, the forte, the staccato, the legato — all from the start. And Callas did this too. ... She was not just a singer, but a complete artist. It's foolish to discuss her as a voice. She must be viewed totally — as a complex of music, drama, movement. There is no one like her today. She was an esthetic phenomenon."

"I did it to serve Callas, for one must serve a Callas."

"To work with her, you had to really understand how she saw your role, not how you saw it. She had a very clear-cut understanding of her role, and you had to fit into that interpretation. She was so great, [yet] she could not distance herself from a role. It was actually quite terrifying — she would at times actually cry while singing! You must only portray the emotions, not become personally involved. But Maria always became the role. She was such a servant of the text and the composer, she would tear her voice to ribbons to accomplish it!"

"This rivality was really building from the people of the newspapers and the fans. But I think it was very good for both of us, because the publicity was so big and it created a very big interest about me and Maria and was very good in the end. But I don’t know why they put this kind of rivality, because the voice was very different. She was really something unusual. And I remember that I was very young artist too, and I stayed near the radio every time that I know that there was something on radio by Maria. The most fantastic thing was the possibility for her to sing the soprano coloratura with this big voice! This was something really special. Fantastic absolutely!"

"[Working with Callas was] like nothing else. Compared to nothing. I would say singers are reproductive artists, but she was a creative artist. She was in the role so much, it was fabulous, fabulous. She was very modest, very easy. But I think she saw red when she saw a journalist. But I could discuss a breath or anything with her. She didn't really have an ego when it came to the work. Her curse was that she was so musical, so intelligent, that she could take on roles that her voice couldn't handle. But what she did was always wonderful. There's a good example of what I mean. Callas — artist. Tebaldi — wonderful singer."

"[Backstage] she was wonderful; she was marvelous. She was easy-going and a worker. Oh my goodness! She rehearsed and rehearsed; always full-voice, never pushing the sound, but she would work till she got what was wanted. And of course had very poor eyesight. She used to pace out how many steps she would go, and there were steps and different levels on stage, as they were, in Norma. And she knew how many paces she could take before she had to take a step, because she was blind as a bat. She had terrible eyesight and, of course, couldn’t wear contact lenses at the stage. She did later."