Maria Callas

Many have asked themselves the reason for this singular artist's immense success. In these notes, Gina Guandalini will try to explain the reasons.

On this, let us read what Signora Gina Guandalini wrote in her book "L'Ultima diva" in 1987....

.... We have already mentioned that almost all the operas by Rossini had disappeared from the repertoire and even an opera like The Barber had managed to survive only thanks to a sort of expedient, that is, the transfer of a mezzosoprano role to the structure of a light soprano. The same did occur to a lot of other operas of this period, which had disappeared or survived thanks to analogous adaptations. Hence, one only alternative was available to prolong such state of things or to find interpreters in a position to revive the repertoire in question, that is, to give justice fully in an authentic way to the implied vocal demands.
There can be no doubt that in Maria Meneghini Callas we have one of the first interpreters of this kind.
Consequently, here one first and highly significant reason for Callas' absolutely unique success: it is possible to say, in fact, that this singer has almost nothing in common with the other singing artists of our period. Her voice cannot let itself be catalogued in accordance with the current categories, in as much as she constitutes a sort of summation of all these categories.

In this sense, it is true that the the phenomenon it represents is not entirely new, since it does nothing but reactivate a type of voice which necessarily had to exist before this specialisation in distinct categories for which we tried to understand the reasons. The fact remains that one of the original traits (we shall see later that it is not the only one) of Callas' art resides in a most lucid conscientious stand for the very necessity of belcanto revival.
It is impossible for us to say through which process Callas reached this result, we may only suppose that, having discovered the Italian romantic repertoire at a given moment of her career, she took the decision of honing the instrument necessary to its interpretation. This simply means that she put herself to study the belcanto's precise technique and more or less forgotten. Also here, we are not in a position to say in which way our artist did proceed but we can establish that , probably alone among the operatic artists of our period, Callas succeeded in completely mastering the principles of this technique.

But there is also more: Callas' vocal register extends over more than two and half octaves, from the low G-sharp up to the high E flat. Here is another characteristic she is probably the only one to possess up to our days. Not even this phenomenon is altogether new, since it appears that artists like Pasta, Falcon and Malibran possessed analogous registers, so the very fact of having develop a similar register accentuates our diva's merits.
One thing is clear and doubtless: the perfect mastery of belcanto art, such as the vocal register's extreme extension, makes Callas capable of giving authentic and convincing interpretations of the operatic repertoire's great number of heroines.

The following fact is perhaps not without interest: the excellent conductor Carlo Maria Giulini told me that during a conversation he had with Toscanini in the great maestro's last years of his life, the latter told him that, in his opinion, Gilda's role could assume full meaning only if sung by a dramatic soprano. Such opinion, which goes against any planted idea and any habit, goes to prove up to which point the true vocal tradition and the authentic understanding of the dramatic meaning had stayed live in the conscience of one of the Italian repertoire's greatest interpreters. In fact, Toscanini appears to have acknowledged the matter that the tragic aspect of Gilda's role, aspect which needs in any case to dominate in the last act, evaporates in a certain way when this role is given to alight soprano. Besides, the maestro's opinion implies the nostalgia for a dramatic type of singer gifted with extreme lightness in the upper register together with, more generally, with an authentic belcanto technique.

Gina Guandalini