Maria Callas and The Grand Tradition

Among the pantheon of the greatest singers in the history of opera, Callas will always be a category unto herself. That she was one of the greatest actors in the history of the operatic stage is an undisputed assessment, but the danger in saying this is to underestimate her achievements purely as a singer. After all, there are too many singers who make an impact on stage but who are not of the highest calibre where it should rightfully count: in the purely vocal arena that has been most memorably termed “The Grand Tradition” by the opera critic J. B. Steane. In this book, Steane analyses all the available recordings of opera singers from the dawn of recordings and spells out the standards to which all the singers have striven, and by which all singers following know they will be judged.

Callas achieved all her dramatic intentions through the stringent art of operatic singing, obeying very scrupulously all the demands of the singing tradition in opera. Pop singers can sing a song such as “Fly me to the moon” in any way they like - as a ballad, a jazz number, a rock tune – and they can sing it in any key that best suits their voices. But an opera singer has no such flexibility. There is only one key, one rhythm, one tempo. And within this mercilessly tight restriction, they have to express emotions. You can’t slow it down in order to express sadness, and you can’t give it a jazzy lilt in order to express joy.
And this straitjacket is precisely what Callas exults in. The tighter the straitjacket, the greater was her ability to stand out from the pack.

People often don’t know this, or don’t know this enough. Her legendary Juilliard masterclasses (conducted long after her voice had burnt out) are fascinating for this very reason. All the young singers she coached tried to be expressive and dramatic, no doubt striving to be at their best while standing before possibly the most dramatic and expressive opera singer in history. But Callas’ standard riposte was: “But you haven’t learned how to sing the aria yet.” The most fascinating lesson was to a young soprano singing Medea’s aria (the ferocious Medea being a famed Callas role). Callas became quite exasperated, at one stage saying to the singer: “You are making every line into a major aria; why don’t you just sing the notes?”

It hasn’t been acknowledged enough that Callas’ ability to spin out a long legato line for expressive purposes was her greatest specialty. I marvel at it. This was where she was really supreme. Legato singing should lie at the core of every singer’s basic armoury, and it is the hardest thing, especially for Callas whose voice was never fully under control even in her halcyon years. However, if you compare the legato of Joan Sutherland (a singer with a perfect voice over which she had total control) and Callas in the very same arias, you will understand how special Callas was. Sutherland’s legato was passable (her unique strengths really lying elsewhere, not here). But Callas not only joins note to note more seamlessly, but also shapes the phrase in terms of dynamics and tonal colouring to achieve the dramatic intentions in her mind. And she does this in a way that leaves all competitors behind.

Extraordinary as she was in single arias, the next thing I want to say about Callas on purely vocal terms is that she is even more masterly in a long scena, where a singer has to negotiate recitatives, an arioso or an aria, and perhaps a cabaletta over a 20 minute segment or longer, ie, what is essentially the equivalent of a long monologue for an actor in a play. Callas’ very special command of what the opera critic Lord Harewood calls the “total musico-dramatic context” is unrivalled by anyone else singing the same music. This is what it really must mean when we glibly refer to her as “one of the greatest singing actresses in opera’s history”. THIS is what we should be talking about, not just about her ability to physically act on stage. For evidence of this, listen to her LP called “Mad Scenes”, a very frivolously-named album, and listen to her long scena from Bellini’s IL Pirata and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. You gain a real respect for Bellini and Donizetti when you hear what they have actually composed. These are not crazy ‘mad scenes’, but truly credible and potent dramatic monologues encapsulating several musically-defined sub-moments that are designed to stretch any singer.

The last thing I want to add about Callas’ purely vocal achievements is that while Sutherland is truly stupendous in the speed, rhythmic accuracy and sparkle of her coloratura or rapid scale-work, Callas can astonish you with the expressiveness of hers: When Callas sallies forth to vocalize about rippling brooks and descending shafts of moonlight, you can actually HEAR the rippling brook and SEE the shaft of moonlight. I am not sure that she actually could have analyzed it for us like that; I think it was all of one piece to her – the dramatic intent informed the way she sang. I don’t think Callas knew consciously what she was doing. She merely responded to the drama of the words and let her singing take her wherever she felt it ought to go.

I am delighted that in this day and age, with opera producers and directors obsessed with performers who can act while hanging upside down, someone like Anna Netrebko can be acknowledged as a soprano of quality. I feel my faith in things re-assured, because Netrebko is a true singer in the Grand Tradition, not a beautiful woman who can also act convincingly on stage. That is to say, she is no flamboyant histrionic trickster.

In this current climate, I often muse that if Callas were to appear on the scene today, she would quickly be a star – but not for the reasons I admire her most for. She would be a star for the theatrical impact she could create. But Callas’ real value was in her achievements within as well as despite the central tradition. People sometimes forget – Callas deserves her place in the operatic pantheon by her singing alone. It is actually not important to me that she was a great stage actor; opera singers who are also great stage actors are no longer so rare. But I don’t know of any other singer who is a great audio actor so consistently. And Callas achieved this within the straitjacket constraints of the Grand Tradition.

Therein lies the glorious miracle that was Maria Callas.