“Maria Callas” was originally published in the May 1964 issue of Vogue.
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Passion and talent arm her. She has the power of genius. In Maria Callas the fire of her presence and the ice of her control meet with almost frightening force. “There is no one like her,” said Rudolf Bing, of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, arena of some of her most crashing battles with management. “She is an artistic personality of unique fascination and power.”
Recently, at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Maria Callas, after a year-and-a-half off-stage, shattered her own superlatives as Tosca in Franco Zeffirelli’s emblazed new production. (Tosca became the toughest ticket in London.) “A radiant personality steeped in music,” Sir David Webster of the Royal Opera called her: “She has the ability to make an audience part of her own experience…she can raise a Tosca to the level of classical tragedy.”
She was photographed for Vogue in her new white first-act costume for Tosca—gone the traditional sweeping hat and cane—and in a dress by Biki-Milan, as her own triumphantly beautiful self. This month in Paris she will sing Norma, and later, record Carmen—an event needled with anticipation.
Of Maria Callas, the director of Milan’s La Scala where her fame sprang, said, “Her voice—her vocal technique—has been easily compared to the nineteenth-century singers, Pasta and Malibran. But I think these very great singers were not up to her in psychological penetration of roles. She is extraordinary in being a real actress. She is also so extraordinary that you have to go back to these nineteenth-century examples in the interest she has been able to create…to bring new audiences to opera, and bring back audiences that had drifted away. Maria Callas,” Antonio Ghiringhelli went on, “is one of the greatest and most complete personalities of the theatre in all time.”