For as long as I have intermittently thought about it (65 and some-odd years), it has been my belief that Callas’ voice was “by nature” that of a dramatic soprano. This is, again, counter to common connoisseur opinion, and is one of three defensible ways of looking at it, the other two being 1) that she was a lyric-coloratura soprano with sufficient size of voice to push herself for a time into dramatic roles that were really “too heavy” for her, or 2) that she was a genuine prima donna assoluta who transcended all categories until brought down by some combination of the factors outlined above. That is how she was presenting herself in the early years of her career, and coming near enough to it that a close look at what it implied for the voice will be in order when we come to that juncture in her development.

Callas sang all her life. In Athens during and just after WW2, she studied intensely, most famously with the prominent coloratura Elvira de Hidalgo, but before that with Maria Trivella. She appeared publicly (in student performances) from the age of 14, and professionally at 16. She sang her first major operatic role under professional auspices, Tosca, in the summer of 1942, when she was 18. Other parts she undertook in this early phase included Martha (in d’Albert’s Tiefland), Santuzza, and Fidelio. She also sang in operetta and made concert and recital appearances, already intermixing songs, florid arias, and dramatic soprano warhorses (Abscheulicher; Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster). So her voice had been thoroughly programmed (including compensations for any underlying weaknesses) and her identity as an assoluta declared, before that Verona Gioconda (age 23), and carried forward into her first recordings, a group of arias for Cetra, in 1949. Before considering those and others from her early and mid-career days, I’m going to jump ahead a few years, to my own “discovery” of her. I think that will afford some helpful context.

Callas made her Metropolitan Opera debut, as Norma, on the opening night of the 1956-57 season, in the company of familiar colleagues (Barbieri, Del Monaco, Siepi). The season was shaping up as a rather special one, with new productions of the long-absent Ernani (Milanov, Del Monaco, Warren, Siepi, under Mitropoulos) and the ever-present La Traviata (Tebaldi, Campora, Warren, directed by Tyrone Guthrie), in addition to the debut of another important soprano, Antonietta Stella, and the return (though not under new direction and design) of complete Ring cycles, with several established Wagnerians (Mödl, Windgassen, Schech, Böhme) in their first local appearances. All these were occasion for excitement in the old 39th Street house (one reviewer termed the February premiere of the Tebaldi/Guthrie Traviata “a second opening night”), but none held quite the electric anticipatory charge of Maria Callas’ arrival, in her most famous role. Many things, not least the publication, on the very date of the opening, of a provocative cover story in Time, contributed to the feel. But the part played by recordings deserves a few words.