Newspaper reviews of Maria Callas's reputation as a diva

¶ … Maria Meneghini Callas to her best at other times, in both her singing and her looks, and, thusly, gives us an overall perspective of the singer's past compared to her present.

Analyzing her performance vis-a-vis the various compositions that she sang and has mastered in the past, the author indicates the range and pitch of the singer's voice. Over and again, the critic alludes to this 'unfortunate' occurrence of a sore throat. We hope that it is only transitory, but Cassidy seems to infer otherwise although that may be only drama on her part.

Cassidy, certainly, seems to have been disturbed by this impediment in her performance for she iteratively intermits her sentences with allusions to the singer's lapsed notes:

The trouble is that a treacherous dryness seems to be plaguing her throat. Her top notes are not what they were because of it, her singing line is sometimes unsteady, and last night a "Mad Scene" marvelously sung ended in anticlimax because she amputated the climactic note before it could utterly betray her.

And again: "I am told by a source that doesn't give me alibis that Callas had such a bad throat at the dress rehearsal they weren't even sure she could go on."

Cassidy also gives us a perspective of her looks seeming to be -- although she doesn't tell us directly -- disappointed with the singer's present garb when compared to that worn in past appearances:

In a red wig this time, the same red wig she wore in Vienna, not to me as eerily effective for Lucia as her own floating hair, then the palest blonde, that bewitched Chicago. Even more slender, I think, with a handspun waistline, those great myopic eyes, those long, lovely hands, that drifting serenity on stage and, that one of the kind Callas voice.

Public performers and stars often entice and disturb their fans with changes in garb and Callas seems to have been no different. Similarly too, performers seem to like to indulge in garment experiments, and from this review we gain an idea that Callas liked to, too.

The review provides us with conceptualization of her voice. The author describes it as an oboe -- "that strange, lovely voice that can command an ensemble but because of the mystery never drowns other voices out." Later, we read that she can master a grand range of techniques and sounds that make her in the critic's opinion unsurpassable:

I don't know where else you can hope to hear such exquisite coloratura, such spun silk fioriture, such gossamer chromatic scales.

Nonetheless, Cassidy again reverts to the unfortunate incident of her voice. Cassidy tells us that up to that 'unfortunate curtain', her performance was outstanding and that the 'throat is a hazard to be cured at all costs'. Again she tell us, 'the finer the singer the more terrifying this kind of thing can be" making Cassidy seem pretty concerned, although it may be more likely that she is dramatizing something of little import in order to interest and excite her reader.

Although the author writes in grandiloquent tones and made Callas seem the Empress of Voices, we get hints that not all was so fine during that performance. For instance, the critic comments that:

She sang the first act beautifully, though her top notes were almost as insecure as her tenor, Giuseppe Campora, himself twice menaced by hoarseness in his throat and by an angry conductor, Fausto Cleva, in the pit.

Some have called Callas no singer, but the author insists that she is (albeit the impediment in her throat):

The beautiful Maria is still an actress, to be sure. Still a singer, too. A singer in trouble, even more last night than in Vienna last spring where some less critical notes of Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" died in her throat. But essentially a singer of such superlative quality that even her "flawed" Lucia is incomparable in our time..

Allusions to previous performances also indicate where Callas sang in the past and where her performance was at its spectacular best. These places include the Metropolitan in New York and a tour in Vienna, as well as a performance "that set Chicago blazing two years ago"