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To say that Rachvelishvili is impressive only because of her extremely powerful voice, or her uniform yet extended registers, is to ignore her keen musicality, attention to detail, and her delicately coloured and engaging interpretation. She grabbed the attention of the sometimes prickly La Scala audience the moment she first opened her mouth and they stayed in her grasp until her last note; no one was rushing out to get their coat this time.
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Maria Callas is the definition of an icon.
Perhaps the most renowned and influential opera singer of all time, she is revered not just for her otherworldly voice and dramatic flair but for her passion, beauty and innate sense of style. The fire and intensity of her personal life paralleled the dramatic roles she interpreted so passionately.
Working closely with the Fondaziono Proge Marzotto, the Italian arts trust who acquired the archive of Maria Callas in 2013; and Karl van Zoggel, head of the International Maria Callas Club, ROADS is delighted to present The Definitive Maria Callas: The Life of a Diva in Unseen Pictures. A lavish visual biography, the books showcases never-before-seen intimate letters, personal photographs and Callas’s private collection of recipes.
A comprehensive and joyous exploration of the life and work of Maria Callas, it is the perfect book for opera aficionados and casual admirers alike.
Happy 70th birthday tenor Josep Carreras.
The anniversary of Callas’ birth seems an appropriate time to flesh out my long-hoarded thoughts on this subject. For Maria Callas, of glorious memory, of eternally astonishing voice, is often cited as the paragon to crown all paragons.
There’s an astonishing variety of roles for which, in discussions of their performance history, her name is inevitably mentioned, in accents of hushed or ecstatic reverence. She is, for many, the diva, La Divina, ne plus ultra. I’m not exempt from the impulse to adore. Her Tosca was the first CD set I bought for myself, and others have joined it since (there’s a fuller panegyric here.) In part, perhaps, because of her preternaturally polished off-stage glamour, Callas has come to be a potent and multivalent symbol. She is, sometimes, the essential Diva, the goddess, having become the perfect woman by her transcendence — or transmutation? — of female fickleness and frailty. She is, sometimes, the symbol of glories past, never to be attained by the present and degenerate generation. She is, sometimes, the incarnation of opera’s astonishing ability to simultaneously surmount and express the anguish of the human condition.
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