Greece · 100th birthday of Maria Callas

Maria Callas was born in New York in 1923 to Greek immigrants. Her family name was originally Kalogeropoulos. After her parents separated, she moved to Athens as a teenager with her mother and sister. There, she studied singing, among others with the Spanish coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo. During the German occupation of Greece, she gained her first stage experience at the Athens Opera.

Her international career began in Italy after the Second World War. In 1947, she performed at the Arena von Verona in Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera “La Gioconda”. In the following years, she regularly sang at La Scala in Milan and at other opera houses in Europe and America. Her well-known roles included Norma in Vincenzo Bellini’s opera of the same name, Lucia in Gaetano Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor”, Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi’s “La traviata” and the title role in Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca”.

Callas combined vocal virtuosity with a performance strongly oriented towards the text and the stage character. Her repertoire contributed to the more frequent revival of operas from the Italian bel canto tradition of the early 19th century. She took on roles that require great agility, a wide vocal range and dramatic expressive capabilities. Her recordings also shaped the later perception of many of these works.

From the late 1950s onwards, vocal difficulties and cancelled performances increasingly became the subject of public discussion. Her last operatic performance took place in 1965 as Tosca in London. Later, she gave master classes and undertook a concert tour with the tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano. She died in Paris in 1977.

The Greek issue refers both to her origins and training in Athens and to her international standing in opera history. The round-number birth anniversary provided a clear occasion to honour her as part of Greek cultural heritage.