In close proportion to Callas’ abbreviated lifespan was the duration of her vocal prime, and both these brevities were so bestrewn with incidents of life and love, of triumph and precarity and temperamental volatility, that even within her lifetime she became an all-too-public tragic heroine, a fictional character to be exploited, torn open by an industry of réclame and gossip in search of secrets, and invested in by all in need of vicarious identification with someone dramatic, preferably a hero/victim. While that’s true in some degree of many prominent performers with vexed personal lives (none more so than operatic divas), Callas is surely its 20th-Century high-art exemplar—Peter G. Davis was dead-on when he wrote that this Callas, the construction of a million fantasies, was by way of becoming opera’s Judy Garland, and for those so invested, an air of profanation has always hovered around efforts at serious artistic critique. As teacher and critic, though, my interest is in seeing whether or not we can sufficiently isolate the workings of the Callas voice from all the extrinsic factors and aficionado fabulations that screen them from us. That way, we might learn something of practical use that we can add to the emotional nourishment, the thrills and chills, that her singing gave us. The practical use would involve enlightenment on the training of voices to reach their full aesthetic/dramatic potential to begin with, and (of special interest in The Callas Case) on their maintenance for a full career duration. Since my views of the “natural” conformation of her voice and of the ways she came to use it differ in some respects from those of other knowledgeable writers, I feel it’s especially important to begin by clearing away those extrinsic factors and fabulations to the greatest extent possible, and to acknowledge where our ability to make responsible statements comes to an end.

By “natural conformation” I mean: the arrangement of all the psychophysical coordinations that obtained in Callas’ voice, whether through training, biological development, or other influence, at the time her international career was underway. (This is usually defined by her performances as La Gioconda at the Arena di Verona in August of 1947.) Two preliminary understandings are important: 1) To the extent that it is “natural,” voice (not just singing, but voice itself) is biologically speaking a secondary function, an adaptation of, or overlay on, neuromuscular activations whose primary life functions lie elsewhere. Operatic voice is a particular elaboration of that secondary function. 2) A voice (again, not just singing) is not so much something you “have” as something you do. It is as it does.

There are four widely discussed circumstances that seem to me most apt to have affected Callas’ voice once her career was launched, and one pre-existing condition that has not figured in the discussion till the last few years. The circumstances are: a significant, intentional loss of weight within a relatively short time; the possible effects, physical and psychological, of abortion and/or Caesarian stillborn birth procedures; other health factors, including the diagnosis of a chronic, progressive disease; and recording—not particular recordings, but the very act of recording. The weight loss and recording factors have demonstrable synchronicities, but not a demonstrable cause relationship, with early signs of decline in Callas’ singing. The other two are on shakier chronological ground. The pre-existing factor, speculative in nature but potentially important, is a possible relationship between a low vibrato rate and a premature vocal decline. Let’s take brief looks at these five proposed influences.