| Venice, September 10th, 2006 –
“ Photographs like these don’t exist any
more”. This is the first comment by so many visitors
at the exhibition Callas. Diva in Venice
at the Centrale Lounge in occasion of the 63rd Venice
Film Festival. This is not surely due to the photographers’
skill – nowadays as clever as in the 50s –
but to the fact that there are no more Divinas. We have
been waiting for them not only for 11 days of the latest
kermesse, but for all the latest editions of the Film
Festival. We saw really a lot of stars and presumed
stars but no one Divina, e those people who thought
to find stylishness in Catherine Deneuve were disappointed
once again. In the awards evening, the icon of the French
cinematography presiding the Venice Jury looked like
Cruella DeVil in “101 Dalmatians”,
or better like her housemaid wearing one of her dismissed
dresses: this is not because of her face stretched by
the neverending discussions about Golden or Silver Lions,
but for those overwhelming black ostrich feathers and
those invisible short sleeves ruthlessly showing her
fattened arms; and let’s not say a word about
her dress, definitely to forget.
Maria Callas driving the legendary Riva motor boat in
1950s
With her, on the stage and parade of
the great hall, actresses and presumed actresses, posing
in every way in order to get an unassuming shot but,
as we saw on the papers, no one achieved a photograph
that will last forever on our mind. And also the major
of Rome cannot flatter himself about having a “Divina”
for his Film Festival, simply because there are no more.
She, Maria Callas, was the “Divina”; she
was the greatest singer of the century but also a glamour
icon as Audrey Hepburn, full of fascination and class
in the same way as Grace Kelly. For many years Callas
chose Venice and Lido. “Not only because at the
Fenice she had her first big success in 1949 as dramatic
agile soprano performing Elvira in the “Puritans”
and because she sang for eight times in the Venetian
music temple till 1954, but because she deeply loved
this town and here she met in 1957 Aristotele Onassis”
declares Bruno Tosi, president of the cultural Association
Maria Callas; we owe him the unpublished photographs
of the “absolute Diva” with the discreet
and unquestionable glamour of Callas. Diva in
Venice.
Maria Callas with Elsa Maxwell and Aristotele Onassis
on the beach
of Excelsior Hotel at Lido of Venice in September 1957
The exhibition is composed of 13 big,
unpublished images, most of them black and white. She
is pictured wearing a bathing costume at Lido in the
summer 1957, while tenderly playing with her husband
Giovanni Battista Meneghini on the shore or driving
a Riva motor boat with the great Luchino Visconti at
the Cinema Palace. The “Divina” is portrayed
while protecting herself from the sun, while sitting
down at Harry’s Bar together with Elsa Maxwell,
well known Hollywood gossipy, or at the Ponte dei Sospiri.
There are also extraordinary images of her at Excelsior
Hotel with Aristotele Onassis and countess Natalia Volpi
Misurata, and of the sumptuous party at Danieli Hotel
on September 3rd 1957, with Merle Oberon by her side.
In the meanwhile also Hamburg points
at Callas; the exhibition Maria Callas. The
myth goes on, organized by the Association
presided by Tosi, is attracting every day thousands
of visitors at Alsterhaus, attracted also by more than
300 blowups spread all over the town.
A lot of thanks
to Cosimo Capanni for the wonderful images,
which enabled the staging of the exhibition
“Callas.Diva in Venice”. |
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