A Latin phrase attributed to the philosopher Rosellino di Compiegne (1120) "Flatus Vocis" (emission of voice) according to which universal concepts have no objective reality as simple expressions of voices without meaning and therefore emotions, contrasts and brings out in the history of human communication the incomparable vocal magisterium of Maria Callas, who today gives music the refrain of a timeless song of the soul.
And from this anthropological vision, a call spontaneously arises to the virtues of a lost time and a life that never returns, as in the poignant words of Garcia Lorca in the famous elegy of "The lament for the death of Ignacio Sanchez": "... it will be late to be born, if an Andalusian is born so dear, so pure, so rich in adventure ». Just as an unrepeatable icon of opera and bel canto will be born, such as Maria Callas, "divine" on the stages of the world, with the charm of a feline and with a heart that housed in an ocean of archaic beauty such as to melt every passion in powder. His diaphanous figure, his every gesture, even his statuesque immobility on the scene, drew a work of art between Phidias and Michelangelo.
Like any great artist, he lived with loneliness of heart, overwhelmed by worldly events, fueled by a din so opposed to his extraordinary "musical silence". So she confided ... «for this I need the warmth of the people, being loved doesn't make me feel alone». But on September 16, 1977, aged just 53, she died alone in her house on Avenue George Mandel in Paris.
Beyond the chronology of the human and worldly collateral events of his life, we prefer to dwell on the essence of his incomparable interpretations, in the memory of his interpretations in the theater and of what has been handed down today by an impressive historical discography.
Maria Callas was gifted with an extraordinary vocal technique and a vocal typology originating essentially from the pleasure areas of the brain, with consequent emissions and timbral colors now sweet, now wonderfully sour, pervading every fiber of the mind and body. Amazing how his powerful and dramatic voice could face even the impervious agility of a light soprano, perfectly combining the dramaturgy of the text with singing and music.
An example where the singing of Maria Callas is not enslaved by too many pre-packaged stylistic paths, referable to the chamber repertoire and to the XNUMXth century operas, can be heard in the aria "J'ai perdu mon Euridice" from Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orpheus, cantata in French, published by EMI. Current philology would indicate a more contained, more instrumental performance of the famous piece, more in line with numerous other usual and somewhat pedisseque interpretations, but Maria Callas is so irrepressible, so lyrically intense and realist before its time to be re-proposed in a sea of blissful vocal normality, an incomparable reading of Gluck's masterpiece.
Norma by Vincenzo Bellini, “Casta Diva - Maria Callas”, an inseparable pair. The prayer addressed to the moon, silver, distant and so beautiful, indifferent to human passions: «Casta Diva, who silver these sacred ancient plants». His incomparable voice, already from the first sentences of this wonderful page, is the thrill and flag of the entire melodrama, as well as in the aria of the "Suicide" from the Mona Lisa by Amilcare Ponchielli, where a dramatically desperate declaimed song is abstracted from a normality vocal, to transform itself into an unrepeatable granite monument.
In contrast, however, the tender words of Mimi addressed to the beloved Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini's Bohème, sublimated by a song not anchored to any muscular vocal physiology. When Mimi's story "leaf leaf I spy on it, so gentle ... in the scent of flowers" bursts into a mighty sound of light "when the thaw comes, the first sun is mine" Mimi's sun rises, Maria Callas's sun rises, the color of life and hope, which in the interpreter's incomparable interpretation, already recognizes the omen of the death of the unfortunate Mimi.
In "Je suis Titania" from Thomas's Mignon, the air flows between impervious agility that the "divine" does not grant to simple academic exercises in vocal technique, unlike some sensational and apparently intelligent warbling that transmits boredom and sometimes nothingness. The vocal agility of Maria Callas shine with their own light, like flames stolen from the stars that seem to dance in a circle of stars.
Maria Callas marked an unrepeatable time of the opera house. The time of the theatrical direction of Visconti, Zeffirelli, of unforgettable performers such as Di Stefano, Del Monaco, Tito Gobbi (memorable, the aria "Vissi d'Arte" and the scenes with Scarpia in a Tosca from Covent Garden in London) together with other stars of the lyrical firmament and with conductors who knew, with the inner song of the mind and heart, to sing with the artists.
She has played 47 great roles, from Norma, Medea, Anna Bolena, Puritani, Tosca, Butterfly, Turandot, Manon Lescaut, Suor Angelica, Lucia di Lammermoor, Traviata, Don Carlos, Lady Macbeth and other roles, as well as Wagnerian excursions with Valkyrie, Parsifal, Tristano and Isotta, ranging from the chamber repertoire to the Opera, to the songs, leaving us today the legacy of a dazzling apotheosis of sounds and voices of the heart.
