#Maria callas full
#Maria callas tv

'And that was very inspiring, like opening up a world that didn't exist anymore.'ДЄfter a few months of meeting people, and reading books and watching documentaries, Volf was still unsatisfied.

'I came for coffee and I sat there all afternoon listening to stories of his experiences with her,' he says. Eventually he started meeting in person with some of the Callas enthusiasts who lived in New York, including one who had actually known her. 'I understood very quickly that she was not only a phenomenon in her lifetime, she was still a phenomenon in 2013, nearly four decades after her death,' says Volf. Volf began his exploration of all things Callas with a deep dive into social media, where he connected with people from all over the world who knew more about Callas than he did, including people in the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. 'As soon as I heard Maria Callas, I was no longer looking at Italian opera in general,' he says. Reeling from the performance, Volf spent a night on the internet researching Italian opera, which led him to a recording of Maria Callas singing the aria 'Spargi d'amaro pianto' from Donizetti's 'Lucia di Lammermoor.' Hearing Callas's voice for the first time took Volf's exploration of opera onto a new path. All of that made my experience so strong, powerful, and mind-blowing.' 'It wasn't just the magnificent music,' he says, 'it was like a concert and theater and cinema came together in one place. The opera was Donizetti's 'Maria Stuarda,' starring the celebrated American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato (who, in the film, gives voice to Maria Callas's letters and memoirs). I was a very typical young person, listening to pop songs and rock.' One night in 2013, while walking by New York's Metropolitan Opera, he impulsively purchased a standing room ticket. Tom Volf was not particularly interested in opera until a chance experience changed the trajectory of his life. ROYAL OPERA HOUSE - COVENT GARDEN (London).MARIA BY CALLAS is a loving portrait of one of history's most extraordinarily talented women, told in a way that is revelatory, unprecedented, and authoritative.

#Maria callas full

Through hearing these full versions of Callas's performances, the audience is able to experience a direct, unmediated response to her music, as the audiences of her time did.

These arias include: 'Casta Diva' ('Norma'), 'Love is a Rebellious Bird' ('Carmen'), and 'I Lived for Art, I Lived for Love' ('Tosca'). Each aria is chosen for its significance for the period in Callas's life during which she sang them. Instead of trying to sum up her vast musical repertoire through countless clips, Volf instead presents some of her most important arias in their entirety. The film also sheds new light on Callas's relationship with Aristotle Onassis, the supreme love of her life.

MARIA BY CALLAS revisits many of the most notable controversies of Callas's life, from the 'Rome Cancellation' to her conflict with the Metropolitan Opera's Rudolf Bing, and demonstrates that, while Callas was a demanding perfectionist, she was neither capricious nor someone who made trouble for its own sake. Through Volf's intimate portrait of Callas, we see that some commonly held beliefs about Callas, notably her reputation as a 'tempestuous' diva, have no basis in fact. When recordings of Callas's voice aren't available, Joyce DiDonato, one of contemporary opera's biggest stars, reads her words.Д¬allas believed that two different women lived in her: Maria, the woman who longed for a normal life and Callas, the public figure and icon, from which an adoring public expected a transcendent experience every time she stepped onstage, and which could quickly become outraged when they felt she had given them anything less.

#Maria callas tv

Told through performances, TV interviews, home movies, family photographs, private letters and unpublished memoirs-nearly all of which have never been shown to the public-the film reveals the essence of an extraordinary woman who rose from humble beginnings in New York City to become a glamorous international superstar and one of the greatest artists of all time.ДЄssembling the material for the film took director Volf four years of painstaking research, which included personal outreach to dozens of Callas's closest friends and associates, who allowed him to share their personal memorabilia in the film. Tom Volf's MARIA BY CALLAS is the first film to tell the life story of the legendary Greek/American opera singer completely in her own words.