Maria Callas was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina. Born in Manhattan, New York City, to Greek immigrant parents, she was raised by an overbearing mother who wanted a son.
About Maria Callas in brief
Maria Callas was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina. Born in Manhattan, New York City, to Greek immigrant parents, she was raised by an overbearing mother who had wanted a son. Forced to deal with the exigencies of 1940s wartime poverty and with near-sightedness that left her nearly blind onstage, she endured struggles and scandal over the course of her career. The press exulted in publicizing Callas’s temperamental behavior, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi and her love affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press, but her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her \”the Bible of opera\” and her influence so enduring that, in 2006, Opera News wrote of her: \”Nearly thirty years after her death, she’s still the definition of the diva as artist—and still one of classical music’s best-selling vocalists.’” Maria Callas Commendatore OMRI ; December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano. She was born at Flower Hospital, 1249 5th Avenue, Manhattan, on December 2,. 1923, toGreek parents, George Kalogeropoulos and Elmina Evangelia \”Litsa\” née Demes, originally Dimitriadou. Callas received her musical education in Greece at age 13 and later established her career in Italy.
The family left for New York in July 1923, moving first into an apartment in the heavily ethnic Greek neighborhood of Astoria, Queens. When Maria was 4, George Callas opened his own pharmacy where he lived with his family in Washington Heights. Around the age of three, Maria’s musical talent began to manifest itself, and she began pressing her youngest daughter, Mary, to sing while she was only five years old. The couple’s marriage continued to deteriorate with George increasingly embittered with his infidelity and absences and often reviled in front of their children. In 1923, after realizing that Litsa was pregnant again, George made the decision to move his family to the United States, a decision which Yakinthi recalled was greeted with LitsA “shouting hysterically’ followed by George “slamming doors’”. In 1926, Maria was christened three years later at the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Archdiocesan Church in New York, where she went on to become a well-known opera singer. She also began pressing Mary to sing when she was five, and as well as the elder daughter, as the pressure put upon young Mary put upon her to sing and perform. In the 1930s and 1940s, she sang in operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini and, further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini.
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This page is based on the article Maria Callas published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
