Maria Callas (Greek title: ΜαÏ?ία ΚαλογεÏ?οποÏ?λου; December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was a Greek-American soprano and perhaps a right-known opera singer of the post-World War II period. She combined an impeccable bel canto technique with dandy spectacular gifts, making her a best known singing actress of the era. An extremely versatile singer, her repertoire ranged from either definitive opera seria, such as Spontini's La Vestale to late Verdi and the verismo operas of Puccini.

Born Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulos to Greek parents within Brooklyn, New York, she moved with her mother to Athens, Greece at the age of Xiii. There she received her musical education & became the pupil of the easily-known treble Elvira de Hidalgo at the Athens Conservatory. Fallowing two or three appearances as a student & inside secondary roles, she mass produced her sales persin debut at a Athens Opera on July 4, 1941, as La Tosca, going in to sing Santuzza and Leonora during the next deuce-ace years. Inside 1947, Callas made her Italian debut at a Verona Arena in La Gioconda under the baton of Tullio Serafin. Together using Serafin, Callas afterward recorded & performed numerous bel canto operas, contributing greatly to the bel canto revival of the Fifties.

Throughout a Fifties, Callas manufactured many appearances at the world's swell houses: La Scala Milan, Opera Garnier Paris, the Metropolitan Opera, Dallas Opera, Royal Opera House, Mexico's Palacio de las Bellas Artes, and a Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Per mid Fifties, strain in her voice began to turn into apparent; by 1958 it reached a point in which she was there is no hanker suitable for numerous roles. Her late stereo recordings evidence consummate musical interpretations sustaining an more and more unstable higher register that wobbled uncontrollably at days.

Within 1969 a Italian filmaker Pasolini cast Callas in her single non-operatic acting role, swimming a legendary greek sorceress Medea in his film of the same title. the production was laborious & Callas is said to use at times fainted fallowing a day of shooting in the sun. Unluckily the film wwhen non a profits in any commercial feel, however is however when cinematically interesting as any Pasolini film. Callas' single film appearance offers clear grounds to believe of her legendary & magnetic stage presence: her ability to hang on to an audience's attention when standing however, revealing an economy of gesture & movement that makes her could have apart from either virtually all more opera performing artist.

From either October 1971 to March 1972, Callas gave a series of master classes at the Juilliard School in New York. (These classes late formed a basis of Terrence McNally's 1995 play Master Class). Inside 1972, George Moore, president of a Met board, offered her the job of Artistic Director. She turned it down to stage the comeback recital inside 1973 tour with the tenor, Giuseppe Di Stefano, however it was a disaster due to Callas's about-all ruined voice.

Callas was romantically included for numbers of years using a Greek transport magnate Aristotle Onassis, and their romance received tremendously publicity. She was introduced to him inside 1957, fallowing the performance inside Donizetti's Anna Bolena, at a person given around her honor by Elsa Maxwell. Around November 1959, she left her married man, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, for Onassis. Based in datthe from one of her biographers, Nicholas Gage, Callas & Onassis got the toddler, a son, world health organization died hours when he was natural on March 30, 1960. A relationship ended nine years late, once Onassis left Callas for Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of assassinated The states president John F. Kennedy.

Heartsick ("First I lost my voice, then I lost my figure and then I lost Onassis," she it used to be that said), Callas spent her survive years dwelling largely inside isolation within Paris, and died around 1977 from either a heart attack at the age of 53. A funeral service was held at a Greek Orthodox Church in Rue Georges-Bizet in September 20, 1977, and her ashes were buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery. Fallowing existence purloined & late recovered, it were scattered into a Aegean Sea, off the coast of Greece.

Within late 2004, opera & director Franco Zeffirelli made a freakish claim that Callas could own been murdered by her companion, Greek piano player Vasso Devetzi, motivated by Callas' $9,000,000 USD estate. When Devetzi carried out Callas' wishes inside founding a Maria Callas Foundation, which will bring international scholarships for immature singers, this seems improbable. The further probably explanation is Callas' overexploitation of quaaludes. Devetzi might keep around conned Callas' sister Iakintha into signing her part of the estate concluded to herself. [http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/zeffirelli.%20.callas%20was%20murdered.]

Greatly admired by numerous operthe fans, disliked by others, Callas was a controversial creative person. Her supporters known as her "La Divina" & raved just about a spectacular intensity & ravishing portayals she bring round the opera stage. Callas' disparager believed that she regularly pushed her voice beyond its natural restricts, achieving her striking outcome at a expense of beauty of tone.

Reference
Greek Fire: A Story Of Maria Callas & Aristotle Onassis by Nicholas Gage. (ISBN 0446610763)