The lights went down, and the heavy curtain of the Scala opened. “How marvellous!” thought Maria Callas as she walked onto the stage, for now she was stepping into the sixteenth century, surrounded by the arcades and grand staircases of Windsor castle. She wore a velvet dress of deep blue, its Italian neckline set with pearls and puffed sleeves. Her neck was adorned with precious stones, her hair covered with a white hood. She embodied elegance and purity; darkness and innocence. She was the Queen of England, about to be betrayed and deposed. She was playing the role of Anne Boleyn in an opera by Gaetano Donizetti. It was one of the most tragic roles she had known: a poor wife accused of adultery by the fearsome Henry VIII, who, wishing to be rid of her, had brought in his wife’s former lover to confound and accuse her. This unscrupulous king then locked them both in the Tower of London and sentenced them to death. How odious a man to abandon his wife for a fresh mistress, upending the holy sacraments with such a vile little scheme! Maria Callas felt at one with her character, and she was able to pour her own past suffering into this lyric drama. She, the child so ugly that her own mother had not wanted to take her in her arms. She, the pimple-faced teenager who used to hide behind thick glasses and unkempt hair. On the stage she could express herself freely, shattering barriers and dispensing with rules. Her voice became as deep as a baritone, and she used it to plumb the depths of sorrow and suffering with her extraordinary chromatic range. Here she stood, lighting up the stage in C Major, spinning her piercing voice into halos of sound. The light veil of her voice both moved and fascinated the audience. Her staccato was clear and precise, like the graceful leap of a ballerina. La Callas was a legend, beyond a mortal woman. La Callas was unique, and irreplaceable.
In recent years, certain critics had complained that Maria Callas’ vocal quality had diminished. She had lost forty kilos, and with them a certain portion of her warmth and power; she was sharper, and her high notes were less stable. To counteract the change, the artist returned to a practise regimen to regain her former precision. She believed that technique was the answer to regaining her dulcet charm. Still, it was not without a hint of sadness that she sang tonight. The decline was visible throughout the scene, like the ghost that haunted Macbeth. And the tragedy of Anne Boleyn was also one of an ageing artist, of a legend tarnished. The voice was the finest instrument in the world, the most spontaneous, the most sensitive; an extension of the body and soul – but also the most fragile. For what was more fleeting than breath? What could be more ephemeral than the talent of a singer? Maria Callas had lost her confidence, and something of that unwanted child broke though in her tears. It was something from a distant past, this fear of losing it all – the love, the recognition, the admiration – that resonated through her deathly lament.
“I am unhappy. Take me from this extreme misery.
Are you smiling? Oh joy!
Don't let me die, don't let me die alone.
Guide me to the sweet mansion of my birth,
To the green plane-trees
To the quiet river, that still murmurs
With our sighs.
There, I forget the streams of anguish,
Give me back one day of my early years,
Just one day of our love.”
Alan Alfredo Geday