The material on this latest Maria Callas DVD to be issued on EMI consists of an interview on a French television weekly chat show, L'invitée du dimanche, in 1969, lasting about eighty minutes, together with a ten minute extract from an interview with Le Monde de la musique in 1964, and a three minute extract from a rehearsal for Norma at the Paris Opera in the same year. Although it is not without interest, I can say straight away that it will have rather limited appeal, and it is difficult to imagine anybody returning to this DVD having seen it once.
The chat show is hosted by Pierre Desgraupes, and has Callas as the featured guest, together with four other guests invited because of their respective relationships to the singer. These include Francesco Siciliani, former director of La Scala Milan, and Luchino Visconti, the great director.
My impression that very few people will gain much from watching this conversation is based on the fact that only a confirmed Callas enthusiast will be prepared to spend an hour listening to bad French spoken with strong Italian accents (although there are, of course, subtitles), where little is said of which those same enthusiasts will not already be perfectly well aware. After some introductory compliments from the host, and Callas's embarrassed responses, things get under way with a brief chat about her general artistic philosophy, which is cited as the reason why she was famously difficult to work with. None of this justification for her behaviour will be new to anybody who has read a biography or two of this artist. I would like to say that it makes a difference hearing it straight from the horse's mouth, as it were, and yet I am really not sure it does. By 1969, such lines appear to have become accepted wisdom on 'La Callas', having had time to fix themselves in the minds of herself and her commentators in the time since her last stage appearance, in 1965.
The excerpt from an interview with Elvira de Hidalgo, Callas's teacher, is less well-known and it is fascinating to gain a little insight into Callas's diligence and rather pyrrhic perfectionism, already evident in her teens. Some rather outrageous claims are made about how de Hidalgo was the only person in the early twentieth century to sing Italian bel canto, and that Callas went on to revive it single-handedly. One is left wondering why de Hidalgo's rather more illustrious contemporaries, Tetrazzini and Galli-Curci to name but two, cannot be acknowledged as exponents of this repertoire, but this is let pass amongst the general fawning taking place in the studio. The audio clip of de Hidalgo singing an excerpt from Meyerbeer's Dinorah, whilst showing that she was not a singer who would appeal to modern tastes, is very illuminating. Close comparisons are possible with Callas, in spite of the vast differences in temperament, depth of colour and vocal heft between teacher and student.
Siciliani contributes very little of note, although his extraordinary theory on the 'special harmonic vibrations' in Callas's voice which, he asserts, resemble bird-song, are amusing. Visconti, on the other hand, proves rather more lively, and does not shirk from speaking his mind once he has sufficiently communicated his immense admiration for Callas. The conversation took place shortly after Callas had agreed to make a film of Medea with Pasolini, but prior to its shooting. Visconti says quite candidly that he feels Pasolini is the wrong director for her. He also tells a story about people throwing vegetables at her after Act I of La Traviata at La Scala in 1955, and various other things that never quite get taken up by the rest of the assembled company, who seem anxious to keep 'La Divina' divine.
The real nitty-gritty comes when Callas herself speaks about her vocal crisis of the early 1960s, and the reason why she had not performed since 1965. This section is very absorbing, because although her premature decline and retirement has been much talked and written about by others, I for one had never heard Callas herself on the subject. To hear her explain how unhappy and frustrated she was that the voice was not working, that this had been the case since around 1961, and that she had to stop to preserve her own integrity and dignity is fascinating. She speaks about resuming private study with de Hidalgo, the record she is half way through making (her 1969 Verdi recital disc), and how she is hoping to return to the stage in 1970 to do La Traviata with Visconti. This is very moving viewing, for of course we know now that this project never came to pass, and that when she did return to the stage for her world tour with di Stefano in the 1970s, it was as a shadow of her former self from a vocal point of view, and brought about the very loss of dignity which she had sought to prevent by quitting in 1965.
The conversation is interspersed with footage of Callas singing parts of Il Trovatore, Il barbiere di Siviglia and Tosca. All three of them are from her debut gala at the Paris Opera in December 1958, and show Callas at her very greatest – vocally, dramatically and interpretatively – even if the first two pieces are unstaged. However, the whole gala is available on DVD, re-released by EMI in 2001, entitled 'la callas…toujours'. One cannot help feeling a little short-changed that the only performance footage on this release is a duplication of material already widely available, and I would suggest that anybody who admires Callas should spend their money on that DVD rather than these conversations.
The short interview with Bernard Gavoty covers much of the same ground as L'invitée du dimanche, although there are nuances which one can pick up on in this 1965 interview in the light of what she said in 1969. The rehearsal excerpt which follows is tantalising but unrewarding. The voice is in arrestingly good form, contrary to what one expects from Callas in 1965. However, the passage consists of 3 minutes of recitative from Act I of Norma which is sung straight through, fully staged with orchestra and chorus, and as such does not differ from a performance. The opportunity to see her really rehearse and work a phrase or a gesture with her colleagues does not arise. And although any newly available utterances from Callas are usually highly collectable, I would venture that this short recitative does not greatly enrich the Callas archive.
That Callas is one of the greatest creative artists of the last century is not something I would dispute. However, the greatness existed in Callas the musician, and Callas the stage animal. Such qualities cannot be expressed in words with any degree of adequacy, and by her own admission, Callas the woman was not particularly interesting or intellectual. This DVD may allow those with a fanatical passion for the subject to pass ninety minutes agreeably. I cannot help feeling a slight sense of EMI cashing in, however, and am left wondering, 30 years after her death, how much more material they will release which has hitherto been deemed of insufficient interest for public consumption, apparently with good reason.
By John Woods