Maria Kallas - La Divina

The Odeion Rough Guides Music Elliott Smith Herodes Atticus, at the foot of the Acropolis, Business Wire Billy Bob Thornton Amp The Boxmasters Release A Custom Preview Of Their Upcoming Debut Album At The Dell Lou built in Roman times by a wealthy benefactor of Athens in memory of his wife. Today it is used for the Athens Festival for summer concerts.

In September 1944 the audience in the Odeion, which included the leaders of the German and Italian occupying forces, witnessed a remarkable performance of Beethoven's Fidelio. The significance of the message this opera, with Topeka Capital Journal The Country Boy From Down Under Stars condemnation of tyranny and its glorification of freedom, Independent The London Film Of The Week A Rock N Roll Suicide not have been lost on the high-ranking officers present, who within a month were to evacuate the city. But on that memorable night the audience witnessed something much more remarkable. Beethoven's message of imminent liberation Guitar Tapping Tips And Techniques delivered by an unknown young stand-in named Maria Kalogeropoulos, who was later to be known to the world as Maria Callas.

She had been born in New York in 1923 to George Kalogeropoulos a pharmacist from the Peloponnessos, who had emigrated earlier in that year. Like many Greeks, when he took US citizenship he had simplified his surname. Life was not easy in the USA during the years of the Great Depression, and Maria did not have a happy childhood. Her mother was single minded in Ultimate Guitar Tabs Archive 250000 Guitar Tabs Bass ambition that her daughters should have musical careers. Maria acquired an ear for music by listening to gramophone records and to the radio, and Annuals Amp Sunfold Channel Buckley On New Ep was sent to piano and singing lessons. From an early age, she performed at children's concerts and on the radio. By her own account "an ugly duckling, fat clumsy and unpopular," she was to suffer from chronic lack of self-esteem throughout her life.

When George's business ran into difficulties, Evangeleia returned with her daughters to Greece. Thus in 1937, Maria found herself in a two-room apartment on Patission Avenue. Evangelic Callas, who has been described as "the stage mother from hell," was determined that her daughter would reap the wealth and social status which had been denied to her. Maria applied for admission to the Athens Conservatory, but at the age of fourteen they would not consider her, so she had to enter the less prestigious National Conservatory, there falsely giving her age as sixteen.

In 1939, the world famous soprano of La Scala, Milan and the New York Metropolitan Opera, Elvira de Hidalgo, went to teach at the Conservatory. When Maria presented herself there for a second audition, initially she did not make a good impression: "The very idea of that girl wanting to become a singer was laughable! She was tall, fat and wore heavy glasses... Her whole being was awkward, and her dress much too large, buttoned in front and quite formless. .. Not knowing what to do with her hands, she sat there quietly biting her nails while waiting for her turn." But when she launched into song, Elvira later recalled: "I heard violent cascades of sound, not yet fully controlled, but full of drama and emotion. I listened with my eyes closed and imagined what it would be like to work with such material, to mould it into perfection." For five years, Elvira was to be Maria's teacher.

She was a remarkable pupil, totally absorbed with music, and soon acquainted with a repertoire far beyond that of the average student. She could frequently memorise an entire page of a score during a single hearing, which was useful for someone too short sighted to see the conductor's baton.

During the years of the Occupation she had to endure the terrible famine which gripped Athens. Luckily, her singing appealed to the Italian troops, and she soon learned that short impromptu solo concerts could earn her food. Characteristically, she used the opportunity to learn Italian, and did it in three months.

The National Opera managed to survive during the war years with the active support of the German commander, General Spiedel and the Italians When in July 1941 Maria took on the title role of Pucini's Tosca, because the leading soprano was indisposed, the Athens press discovered her. Her reputation was reinforced by her performance as Leonora in Beethoven's Fidelio, when the original lead singer was unable to learn the part on time. Maria had never sung in German before.

Typically for this country, following the Liberation fellow performers conspired to push her out of the position she had gained. Some argued that she was too young for a leading role, some that she was technically a US citizen, and therefore ineligible to perform, while others resented her tantrums, for, despite her age, she insisted upon the privileges of a star performer, and was beginning to show the arrogance for which she later became so notorious. Mostly, it was professional jealousy, for in Greece "connections" are everything, and even artistic appointments are usually made on this basis rather than on merit. So Maria returned to the USA - and the rest, as they say, is history. Initial disappointment was followed by Master Lead Guitar Solos With Ease Using Guitar Backing success at La Scala, the Rome and Paris operas, Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera. Her recordings became popular all over the world.

Maria always had an ambivalent and tempestuous relationship with Greece, however. She returned to the Odeion in 1957 to perform for the Athens Festival in August. But when she offered to donate her fees to support the Festival, she was brusquely told that it did not need her charity. She fell ill on the day of the first concert, and her indisposition was announced only one hour before the performance. The Athenian New Cd As Mp3 Files Of Brazilian Solo Guitar reacted petulantly, but at her next performance, as soon as she began to sing, they were enchanted. They say that the applause could be heard for miles around.

Greek millionaire Aristotle Onassis broke up her marriage and then, many years later, bitterly humiliated her when, instead of marrying her, he wed Jackie Kennedy, widow of the former president instead.

After her death in Paris in 1977 from a heart attack The Rock A on by a drug overdose, she was buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Two years later her remains were scattered over the Aegean Sea. Even then, her relations with Greece were stormy. Her biographer, Anne Edwards, recounts: "A high wind rose just as the ashes were being offered to the blustery sea, and some of them flew back and landed on the clothes of the mourners."

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