For the Treccani Institute she is Maria Callas, celebrated soprano, the most loved, discussed and regretted woman of the 20th century. The new Encyclopedia of Contemporary Music Treccani traces the “Callas myth”, the opera singer who left “an original and lasting imprint on the history of 20th century music”, revolutionizing the aesthetics of singing with an artistic path that made her unique
The musicologist Luca Aversano recalls how Callas left “an original and lasting imprint on the history of musical interpretation of the 20th century”, revolutionizing the aesthetics of singing and bringing opera back to the center of the cultural debate, despite a timbral complexity characterized by two opposing elements: “the robust, dark intensity of the lowest notes” and “the pearly and elegant subtlety of the high coloraturas”.
Not a “beautiful” voice, therefore – whatever this definition means – but, as the music critic Alberto Mattioli also underlines in the portrait drawn in the latest issue of Enciclopedia Italiana, the cultural in-depth periodical published by Treccani, a voice “extensive and powerful, dark, non-homogeneous, full of asperities, even strident” which however belonged to a true, precise musician, respectful of the will of the authors and capable of transforming the inhomogeneity into an expressive figure thanks to a rigorous conception of singing.
The ability to master an imperfect instrument was combined with an interpretative intelligence that went far beyond simple technique. With her – underlines Mattioli – singing rediscovered the nineteenth-century spirit of the great romantic prima donnas, but in a new and modern form: “Callas’ singing was so new because it was ancient, that to define it a formula that became famous had to be coined: dramatic soprano of agility”.
The bond with the director Luchino Visconti, the great roles at La Scala and the dialectical duplicity of his vocal register projected on multiple levels – from tragic solemnity to erotic lightness, from the exclusivity of opera to the popularity of magazines – are all stages of an artistic and human biography that escapes any definition and which constitutes the reason for the “Callas myth” and its enduring success.
The long decline, escape from the world and even death, still shrouded in mystery today, seem to reflect the fate of his most intense characters. (by Paolo Martini)