| The Cultural Association Maria Callas,
presided by the venetian Bruno Tosi is more and more
growing worldwide in commitments and prestige.
After the big success at the Government
Palace in Syracuse and at the Alsterhaus in Hamburg,
the exhibition “A Woman, a Voice, a Myth”
came to China, in Beijing, some days ago, at the same
time of the praised tour of the Fenice Theatre (“Traviata”
and Mozart’s “Requiem”) invited by
the ninth Beijing Music Festival and with the collaboration
of the Venetian Massimo.
The Fenice Superintendent, Giampaolo
Vianello, showed his appreciation for the undertaking,
likewise the President of Venice Casino, Mauro Pizzigati,
who sponsored the venetian transfer to China. The exhibition
dedicated to the Divina mainly concerns the singer’s
staying in Venice and her most famous performances at
the Fenice, in particular “Traviata”.
 
The exhibition opening, after the second
performance of Verdi’s masterpiece (acclaimed
protagonist Luz Del Alba, who will take her “Violetta”
to the Fenice in April 2007), took place at superior
Ridotto of the Poly Theatre, where there was a gorgeous
party with Chinese and Italian important people. In
particular, visitors admired a blow-ups of the “Traviata”
playbill at the Fenice with Callas, wonderfully staged
one century after the first opera performance at Massimo
Theatre in Venice in 1853.
A whole wall was full of extraordinary,
even unpublished, blowups of Callas-Violetta in Venice;
there were also the stunning costumes and jewellery
worn by the primadonna for “Traviata” at
the Metropolitan of New York (1958) and Zeffirelli’s
“Tosca” at the Covent Garden of London.
Great emotion when, for the toast,
Callas’s unforgettable voice could be heard in
“Libiam nè lieti calici”; a definite
“debut”, this one, for the Divina in China,
where she never sung. The atmosphere was joyful, also
because the subject of the party was Venice Carnival,
with a lot of chinese models wearing ‘700 costumes
and masks given to all the guests by the President of
Venice Casino, Mario Pizzigati.
Callas’s exhibition in Beijing
was unpretentious, just a sample of the great one that
will take place in 2007 in the chinese capital, thanks
also to the collaboration of the Italian Institute of
Culture in China supervised by Maria Weber, thirty years
after the biggest soprano’s death.
Needless to say that the same exhibition
will be in Venice too, in one of the most renowned place
of the town.
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