[Tuoksu]

Agreed. And the tragedy deepens for us when we know how insecure Callas was, how driven to compensate for the sense of never being good enough - or, to this particular point, beautiful enough. "What ifs" are always speculative, but had she grown up feeling loved for herself, and not needing to earn love by constantly topping and torturing herself, she might have seen and felt herself to be the beautiful young singer that we, looking at her early photos, can see so plainly. The art that her emaciated "glamor" was intended to serve might ultimately have been better - or at least longer - served by a little more self-acceptance and a little more healthy meat on her bones.

I just pointed out on another thread that I preferred her with some more flesh too. But Callas didn't decide on losing so much weight out of insecurity. First, there was Serafin (and other colleagues) teasing her. He even made her step on a scale during a lunch out! It was then that she decided to lose the weight. She said it wasn't healthy, that she was perspiring too much and that it was getting out of hand. She also did it for dramatic reasons. She was about to do her Medea and thought the face was "too fat" to achieve to image she had in mind, among other things I can't recall right now.

Edit: it was Gobbi not Serafin who made her step on a scale.

 

[Woodduck]

I just pointed out on another thread that I preferred her with some more flesh too. But Callas didn't decide on losing so much weight out of insecurity. First, there was Serafin (and other colleagues) teasing her. He even made her step on a scale during a lunch out! It was then that she decided to lose the weight. She said it wasn't healthy, that she was perspiring too much and that it was getting out of hand. She also did it for dramatic reasons. She was about to do her Medea and thought the face was "too fat" to achieve to image she had in mind, among other things I can't recall right now.

Edit: it was Gobbi not Serafin who made her step on a scale.

Not to prolong this excessively (dwelling on her appearance begins to make me feel like a "fan" rather than an appreciative musician!), but Callas's weight varied quite a bit even before the drastic slimming. At her heaviest she was undoubtedly too fat, but that's not what we see in, say, the photos of Tiefland. She became very nearly anorexic in her desire to get slimmer and slimmer; it wasn't a few comments by Serafin or others that drove her - they merely piqued her innate insecurities - and the "it serves the drama" stuff was partly rationalization.

 

[RES]

I just pointed out on another thread that I preferred her with some more flesh too. But Callas didn't decide on losing so much weight out of insecurity. First, there was Serafin (and other colleagues) teasing her. He even made her step on a scale during a lunch out! It was then that she decided to lose the weight. She said it wasn't healthy, that she was perspiring too much and that it was getting out of hand. She also did it for dramatic reasons. She was about to do her Medea and thought the face was "too fat" to achieve to image she had in mind, among other things I can't recall right now.

Edit: it was Gobbi not Serafin who made her step on a scale.

I think you were right the first time. Unless I am remembering wrong, it was Gobbi who relates the story, but Serafin who told her at lunch with the two of them, during the LUCIA recording: 'you eat too much.' She replied: 'When I eat well, I sing well' [doubtless thinking of privations in occupied Greece]. Then it was Serafin who suggested finding a scale. Incidentally, Tuoksu, where is that story? I remember it verbatim but can't remember where I read it.

There are other versions as well: according to John Ardoin, she went to see 'Roman Holiday' that was released in 1953, and decided that she wanted to be as as slim as Audrey Hepburn. Her husband says nothing about either story, merely discussing skin and ankle problems that her excessive weight was causing. He wrote that they discovered an intestinal parasite that seemed to be slowing down her metabolism; when that was expelled, she was able to lose weight in a normal manner. But being Callas, she went too far. She looked and sounded great in the December 1953 Bernstein MEDEA (about six months into the diet). If only she had left it at that... But Meneghini says he tried to get her to stop dieting but that always started an argument. I'm inclined to believe him in general because during the Sept. 1957 interview in Chicago with Norman Ross, when asked how she lost the weight, she says 'There was something wrong with me. I'm a little embarrassed to say what it was. But when I discovered it, I cured it and was able to lose the weight, with the help of a little dieting. I don't mean not eating, but eating the right foods.' However, Meneghini says that when he met her, she was obese--though he liked 'fleshy' women. But this is not confirmed by photos. In 1949, she looks like she was of healthy weight and proportions, but we can see that she added an unhealthy amount of weight from that point to early 1953.

 

[Tuoksu]

I think you were right the first time. Unless I am remembering wrong, it was Gobbi who relates the story, but Serafin who told her at lunch with the two of them, during the LUCIA recording: 'you eat too much.' She replied: 'When I eat well, I sing well' [doubtless thinking of privations in occupied Greece]. Then it was Serafin who suggested finding a scale. Incidentally, Tuoksu, where is that story? I remember it verbatim but can't remember where I read it.

There are other versions as well: according to John Ardoin, she went to see 'Roman Holiday' that was released in 1953, and decided that she wanted to be as as slim as Audrey Hepburn. Her husband says nothing about either story, merely discussing skin and ankle problems that her excessive weight was causing. He wrote that they discovered an intestinal parasite that seemed to be slowing down her metabolism; when that was expelled, she was able to lose weight in a normal manner. But being Callas, she went too far. She looked and sounded great in the December 1953 Bernstein MEDEA (about six months into the diet). If only she had left it at that... But Meneghini says he tried to get her to stop dieting but that always started an argument. I'm inclined to believe him in general because during the Sept. 1957 interview in Chicago with Norman Ross, when asked how she lost the weight, she says 'There was something wrong with me. I'm a little embarrassed to say what it was. But when I discovered it, I cured it and was able to lose the weight, with the help of a little dieting. I don't mean not eating, but eating the right foods.' Also, remember that in 1949, she was not all that heavy, and Meneghini says he liked Rubensesque women. Between 1949 and 1953, he says she gained a tremendous amount and that really was not healthy.

I read it on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Callas

In the early years of her career, Callas was a heavy woman; in her own words, "Heavy-one can say-yes I was; but I'm also a tall woman, 5' 8½" [174 centimeters], and I used to weigh no more than 200 pounds [91 kilograms]." Tito Gobbi relates that during a lunch break while recording Lucia in Florence, Serafin commented to Callas that she was eating too much and allowing her weight to become a problem. When she protested that she wasn't so heavy, Gobbi suggested she should "put the matter to test" by stepping on the weighing machine outside the restaurant. The result was "somewhat dismaying, and she became rather silent." In 1968, Callas told Edward Downes that during her initial performances in Cherubini's Medea in May 1953, she realized that she needed a leaner face and figure to do dramatic justice to this as well as the other roles she was undertaking. ​

All these stories are equally plausible. Like Duck said let's not dwell too much on this. There will always be a sort of mystery about Callas that we can't completely fathom, whether it's her weight loss, her disease, her vocal decline, her romantic affairs, her alleged pregnancy..etc

 

[RES]

I read it on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Callas
All these stories are equally plausible. Like Duck said let's not dwell too much on this. There will always be a sort of mystery about Callas that we can't completely fathom, whether it's her weight loss, her disease, her vocal decline, her romantic affairs, her alleged pregnancy..etc

Right. It was in Gobbi's memoir where I read it. And I now remember Gobbi saying 'I don't know how I could have been so ungalant.' (And I loathe the sensationalistic Gage assertion; it is preposterous, as Callas underwent premature menopause in 1957--probably another reason for vocal decline). But indeed, this is not a topic on which to dwell--my original point. Callas' real voice, the one that reflected her transcendent art, is the pre-1954 voice where everything her musical sensibility could produce was easily available to her and us.

 

[silentio]

The singers who set the bar too high for me are:

Claudia Muzio for verismo
Maria Callas for almost whatever she sung
Maggie Teyte for the French repertoire
Fritz Wunderlich for the lyric repertoire
Germaine Lubin for Wagner
Mattia Battistini for Verdi baritone

 

[Pugg]

Fritz Wunderlich for the lyric repertoire

You must be joking, right?

 

[silentio]

You must be joking, right?

Why? Did I miss something ? Some label just released his Siegfried or Tristan?

 

[PaulFranz]

To this day, I think that all baritones and basses chantantes should be subjected to the Peter Dawson test: can they sing the Largo al factotum, or Schubert's Erlkoenig, or Honour and Arms (or whatever) as cleanly, easily and elegantly as that great and underrated Australian bass baritone did?

Oscar Natzka sang much of the same British song repertory as Dawson, just with a profondo voice that was about three times his size. His Honour and Arms is a benchmark. I think he would satisfy the needs of those who want a darker and more opulent tone, while still not sacrificing agility and general technical freedom.

And when he opens up in his upper-middle register (which is C-D because he has a very low-set voice), the sound, size, and freedom is really something else. It's got the openness, beauty, and freedom of a McCormack. See his "so mean a triumph" high-ish note in Honour and Arms.

His style, even in his time, was really a throwback style to when even the lowest profondi sang with the same basic technique and attitude of leggero tenors. You know, the Nivettes, Payans, Sibiryakovs of the world.

 

[Seattleoperafan]

When I was young I was very devoted to some singers and couldn't enjoy Gwyneth Jones or Eva Marton because I was always comparing them to Nilsson, who I used to be fanatic about. I saw Jones live in Kundry at Bayreuth at 15 and was too young to know what I was experiencing!!! If only I could go back in time. I have many friends on here who are ruined by Callas for everyone else in everything she sang but I only feel that way about her singing on Armida, which I feel will always be unsurpassed.