Maria Meneghini Callas

Rating:
Summary: An honest attempt to de-deify Callas
Review: I remember the first time I read this book I became angry because I thought Scott was trying to make Callas less important than she had always been in my eyes. It is good to see something through another's eyes, particularly when they belong to a very incisive, observant writer. I have have gone back over the ensuing years and re-read chapters. Each time I find an item that makes me stop and think about my position on Callas. I still love Callas above any other singer, but I am much more honest in my admiration for her art. It wouldn't hurt some of her hysterical followers to examine the reasons behind their rabid worship of a person, who was after all, just human. Maria herself disliked being called "Divina" I am very offended by those who hurl epithets at anyone who dares not to worship at the altar of their godesses. To call a work this well researched and thought out "garbage" displays a small mind indeed.

Rating:
Summary: Carefully researched study of Callas the musician
Review: Michael Scott's book on the life and career of Maria Callas holds a strong appeal for the musician. Although he orders his study chronologically and includes quite a bit of biographical detail, this is not a book for gossip lovers. Instead, Scott dispassionately evaluates Callas' singing in general and major performances and roles in particular.

Scott's basic thesis is that Callas reached her vocal peak early, in the first part of the 1950s, and her great weight loss was in large part responsible for a general vocal decline thereafter, at first slow, then precipitous after her divorce from Meneghini.
At times his viewpoint provides a useful corrective to stories that have been handed down and repeated that are not exactly true--his take on the infamous Rome Norma of January 1958 is a striking example. His opinion that the root cause of many of the "scandals" that dogged her career was escalating vocal trouble certainly deserves serious consideration.

On the other hand, Scott is too quick to dismiss much of Callas' work from the later 1950s. By then, the early, prodigious vocal endowment had somewhat diminished, true; but for most opera lovers these years were the time when her still responsive voice was matched with her most exquisite musicianship.

Most readers will disagree, perhaps vehemently, with some of Scott's judgements and opinions; yet, by virtue of his firsthand witnessing of many of Callas' performances and determined avoidance of scandalmongering, his book joins a select company of work by Fitzgerald, Ardoin, Jellinek and a few others as one that sheds true light on the art of this much-discussed singer.

Rating:
Summary: Disrespectful, factually incorrect, and strangely biased...
Review: The one thing that Scott's biography of Callas has going for it is that he mostly sticks to Callas the artist, and avoids the gossip and speculation surrounding her personal life. However, what exists is a choppy, extremely opinionated, narrow minded repetition of all the same facts that are better found in other sources. He mentions that Callas "mistakes artfullness for artistry" about 100 times too. He basically feels that the deepening of her interpretation as her voice grew weaker was not real, and that her lyric and dramatic interpretation became more false as time went on. As the book plods on rehashing the same old information we have read over and over again elsewhere.

I own almost all the Callas biographies that have appeared in English, and I hated this book so much that I pulled out the photo section in the center to keep the pictures, and sent the book to the recycling center the day after I had the misfortune to purchase it.