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1947
December 30 and January 3-8-11 1948
TRISTANO E ISOTTA (in Italian) as Isotta
with Fiorenzo Tasso (Tristano), Fedora Barbieri (Brangania),
Raimondo Torres (kurwenal), Boris Christoff (Re Marke),
director Tullio SERAFIN
1948
January 29-31 and February 3-8-10
TURANDOT (as Turandot) with Josè
Soler (Calaf), Elena Rizzieri (Liù), Bruno Carmassi
(Timur), director Nino SANZOGNO
1949
January 8-12-14-16
LA VALCHIRIA (in Italian) as “Brunilde”,
con Gianni Voyer (Siegmund), Bruno
Carmassi (Hunding), Giulio Neri (Wotan), Jolanda Magnoni
(Sieglinde), Lucy Cabrera
(Fricka), director Tullio SERAFIN
January 19-22-23
I PURITANI (as Elvira) with Antonio
Pirino (Arturo), Ugo Savarese (Riccardo), Boris
Christoff (Giorgio), director Tullio SERAFIN
1950
January 13-15-19
NORMA (as Norma) with Elena Nicolai
(Adalgisa), Gino Penno (Pollione), Tancredi
Pasero (Oroveso), Nerina Ferrari (Clotilde), director
Antonino VOTTO
1953
January 8-10
LA TRAVIATA (as Violetta) with Francesco
Albanese (Alfredo), Ugo Savarese/Carlo
Tagliabue (Germont), director Angelo QUESTA
1954
February 13-16-21
LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR (as Lucia) with
Luigi Infantino (Edgardo), Ettore Bastianini
(Enrico), Giorgio Tozzi (Raimondo), Giuseppe Zampieri
(Arturo), director Angelo
QUESTA
March 2-4-7
MEDEA (as Medea) with Renato Gavarini
(Giasone), Gabriella Tucci (Glauce), Giorgio
Tozzi (Creonte), Miriam Pirazzini (Neris), director
Vittorio GUI
 
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Ciò benedeto…(my dear).The Venetian
expression was so many times used by Maria Callas, even
in society, to greet her closest friends. In the mixture
of international languages and in her fairly good Italian
there was always some typical Venetian expressions,
untranslatable, but always particularly significant.
The great singer’s first “Italian”
was peppered by unmistakable Veronese inflections, that
were colourful, extravagant, confidential and nice indeed
. She owed a lot to Verona, the town of her Italian
but also of her worldwide debut for her international
career; it was the town where she had met the first
man of her life, who somehow had substituted her father
and was of great help and support to her at the beginnings.
A deep love broke out at first sight,
when Meneghini took her to Venice for the first time;
at once she was fascinated and she was in ecstasy admiring
Titian “Assunta”(Our Lady of the Assumption),
in the Frari Basilica. After that summer in 1947 she
asked many times to be back in Venice, even only to
visit her “Madonna”. When she sang in the
dressing-room, she used to have a little eighteen century
picture representing the “Sacred Family”.
It was a reproduction, silver and gold framed, not only
a simple lucky charm, but a religious token of protection.
We often talk about destiny, and maybe this attraction
towards Venice (that many years later would have changed
her woman life because here she met Onassis and she
fatally went on a cruise on board of “Christina”,
the Greek shipowner’s multimillionaire yacht),
was rightly “perceived” by Callas.
It was not “Gioconda”
at Verona Arena, but a quick succession of performances
at the Fenice Theatre to lead her, clearly and definitively,
to a brilliant artistic future. We can state Callas
was born as great singer on December 30th in Selva hall,
focusing a very appreciated “Isotta”, directed
by Tullio Serafin, with other big singers as Boris Christoff
and Fedora Barbieri, who was several times by her side.
“An artist with an unusual sensibility,
– Giuseppe Pugliese, a critic of that time for
the Gazzettino wrote – a stage mistress, that
has revived her love passion with sweet, feminine enthusiasm
rather than with druidism and virility. But her beautiful,
passionate voice, has found, above all in the high notes,
shrill, lyrist tones”. Few days later on the same
stage another role, arduous but different in style:
Puccini’s Turandot. And Pugliese sang the deserved
praises: “Turandot is admirable for her shrill,
high voice, unusual, above all, in high tones; an extremely
sensitive artist, with such a scenic mastery to get
over some tone variations, she has dealt with her task
with energy and confidence and moreover has sung first
with statuesque attitude, then with deep softness as
the character required, under the maestro Nino Sanzogno’s
guidance”.
 
It was a complete victory, considering
the critic’s well known strictness, just because
the two reviews emphasized, in every sense, how many
were the strings of the bow of the 24-year-old soprano;
she was praised as actress and singer as well, even
though she had not met Visconti and Zeffirelli yet.
Since then she came back to her beloved Venice every
year till 1954, singing one or two operas at the Fenice
Theatre and making her revealing debuts. Other towns
are linked to the greatest singer of this century; Milan,
where she was unquestionable queen at the Scala Theatre,
and Paris, where she lived the last years and tragically
passed in1977, at the age of 53 (they both and Venice
dedicated her a street).
But let’s get back to the unforgettable
performances that gave fame to the Hellenic singer,
and also to the theatre that by intuition called her.
Things were changing in Italy too and the world of music
was looking at her with increasing interest.
Ferdinando Ballo, for example, in June
1948 invited her to the premiere in Italy “Cardillac”
by Paul Hindemith, produced by The Biennale of Venice
for the XI Festival of Contemporary Music, where the
greatest stage managers, film directors and singers
worked. In that time Maria Callas was singing “Forza
del Destino” ( Strenght of Destiny) in Trieste
“Tristano e Isotta” in Genoa and was going
to rehearse “Turandot” at Terme of Caracalla
and for this reason she refused.
In 1949 she was reconfirmed at the
beginning of the season for “Walchiria”
( a “Brunilde”-Pugliese wrote-with a Wagner
natural esprit, fierce, moved, simple and incisive),
with Serafin once again.
During the successful performances,
just the day before the second opera of the season “Puritani”,
Margherita Carosio withdrew because of a sudden illness,
and there was no other singer substituting her. Searches
were unsuccessful. At last maestro Serafin went to the
Theatre suggesting Maria Callas in the role of Elvira.
His idea caused much surprise and perplexity: how could
Brunilde’s strong and high voice fit the soft
intonations of Bellini.
“Wait and you will see”
the maestro said. The preparation was a real tour de
force, but on January 19th the curtain punctually raised
for Puritani. “Many other singers with Callas’s
voice and personality, but without her intelligence-
Pugliese affirms- would have failed in the passage between
the two operas. Callas didn’t. She could brilliantly
sing in accordance with the variety of tones and renditions,
since she is a perfectly able singer. She technically
overcame trills, scales, virtuosities, even in the dizzy
expressive rises, with a great musical strength; in
a word, a rehearse worthy of a great skill”. A
new example of dramatic soprano was born on the Italian
scene, recalling clearly great myths of the past Malibran
and Pasta, that had dealt with a wide, different repertoire,
reaching the mezzo soprano’s low notes as well
as the soprano’s high ones (but in that case diapason
and orchestra were quite different).
 
The real Callas, therefore, was born
at the Fenice in January 1949. In the following years
they did not think about Wagner any more, but about
romantic and tragic melodrama heroines; the Venetian
public was charmed by unforgettable interpretations.
A solemn Norma, a moving, anguished Violetta in “La
Traviata”, a “Lucia di Lammermmor”,
striking for virtuosity and expression and, at last,
soon after Florence and Scala, her masterpiece: “Medea”,
where ,singing and acting , she was able to represent
the character’s desperate obsession. For Norma
there was on the stage Antonio Votto ( another important
maestro for her career) and, for the recovered opera
by Cherubini, the great Vittorio Gui.
On the whole Maria Callas performed
eight operas in Venice till 1954; it was a good time
for the Fenice Theatre, that had realized the new opera
goddess but failed in bringing her back to the lagoon.
As we told before the Doges’town influenced a
lot the leading lady’s private life. This new
worldly-sentimental chapter started ten years after
her debut, in summer 1957, when a scandal broke out
in Edimburgh because of her leaving the scenes at the
last performance of “Sonnambula”, to take
part to the great ball at the Danieli’s Hotel,
organized for her by Elsa Maxwell. There were 160 guests,
the most important names of the international jet-set:
countess Volpi, Arthur Rubinstein, Henry Fonda, Consuelo
Crespi and other people of the world of cinema.
Maria Callas sought the friendship
of “Hollywood’s witch”, who had supported
Renata Tebaldi when they were rivals; all this in order
to blandish the gossipy journalist, who had written
very unfriendly articles on occasion of some performances
in Chicago. They had met by chance at a party for the
Hellenic-American Aid Fund, and Maria succeeded in upsetting
the situation making the terrible Elsa become her most
enthusiastic fan. From a social and sophisticated point
of view, the masked ball was a great success, and the
pictures of the party and Maria’s ones, where
she, already very thin, is wearing a bathing-costume
in front of a box of Lido Excelsior, went around the
world.
The performances in Edimburgh were
very important since it was a Scala official tour. The
four performances at the end of August had an enormous
success, and then Ghiringhelli, Superintendant of Milan
Theatre, decided to add an extra performance, in order
to satisfy the numerous demands. Maria was inflexible;
her contract had been honoured and, without saying a
word, she left The Festival to go to the Venetian party,
giving a young and unknown Italian singer a great chance.
Her understudy, Renata Scotto, substituted her successfully
and the critics declared: “a star was born”.
An important detail: at Maxwell ball there were also
Tina and Aristotele Onassis, but nothing happened except
for the ordinary compliments.
Her destiny was waiting for her two
summers later, in June 1959, at countess Emanuela of
Castelbarco’s house where there was a party in
her honour. The beautiful house, at Salute, also mum
Wally and grandfather Arturo Toscanini’s home
for a long time, was surrounded by a gorgeous garden,
where the most important personalities had passed. Among
the ladies Tina Onassis, wearing an amazing diamond
coronet, stood out for her beauty. But that very night
Tina realized that her husband’s eyes were stuck
to Callas. Ari soon managed to sit by her and invited
her to a cruise on Christina, few weeks later.
 
At first Callas and her husband recused,
but Onassis went to the premiere of “Medea”
at Covent Garden and organized a gorgeous after-performance
(inviting also Churchill, Margot Fonteyn, Cecil Beaton
and John Profum). He repeated her invitation to the
cruise and Callas, after getting Biki (Milanese coutourière,
who devotedly followed her for many years) to prepare
a fabulous cruise outfit, at last accepted. Departure
from Montecarlo, arrival to Venice.
After Portofino, from the Mediterranean
to The Aegean Sea, Istanbul, Smirne (Onassis’s
hometown), stopping at Mount Athos, on August 7th all
the guests were entertained by the Patriarch Atenagora.
The Patriarch knew Onassis and Maria too. He started
speaking in Greek and blessed them, almost a wedding
ceremony. The cruise ended in Venice, where the Christina
anchored, and Mr. and Mrs. Meneghini went back to Sirmione
by one of Onassis’s private plane. But the same
night Onassis went to Meneghini to “ask Maria’s
hand in marriage” and soon took her away to Venice.
From that moment she would have been
queen of Christina. Onassis’s love didn’t
last long and Maria went back to Venice other times.
In the 60s there was a hypothesis: “Anna Bolena”
at the Fenice, but the plan was not brought to an end,
even if it was going well. She went to the Cinema Festival
to celebrate Visconti when he got the Leone d’Oro
(Golden Lion), and the film director offered her a great
role in a film dedicated to Puccini. Giancarlo Menotti
wanted her protagonist of “Console”. Several
times she was allured by both theatre and cinema and
in Venice she also met Joseph Losey, who offered her
a film based on Tennessee Williams’s “Boom”,
that was later played by Liz Taylor.
In Venice she also met more than once
Pier Paolo Pasoloni, the only one who convinced her
to play in his debated but enchanting “Medea”,
and for whom she felt a tender affection, as demonstrated
by their love correspondence. One night they went on
speaking for hours in front of Excelsior Blue Bar, regardless
of photographers and curious people. A long time had
passed since she went to Venice to devoutly admire “Assunta”.
Bruno Tosi
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