Ave, Maria

Anyone who thinks that an artist’s life is irrelevant to their artistic achievement, and for that matter anyone who thinks that it isn’t, must be given pause by Maria Callas. It is now exactly 40 years since her death and everything she recorded is available on multiple pressings. But of the huge body of material that has appeared about her, only a small percentage concerns itself with the recordings. There are innumerable biographies, memoirs, refutations of memoirs, studies of the influence of her fluctuating erotic life on her singing, her meteoric rise, the Great Decade, the tragic decline, and so on. All of these might be fascinating, but they draw attention away from the only thing that mattered about her: her art. Even when discussion homes in on her voice, it tends to be on whether she was a pushed-up mezzo, whether her unique sound was the result of a gothic arch-shaped roof of the mouth, and so forth.