Maria Callas' life and consummate skill is explored in this documentary focusing on her famous interpretation of Tosca.
INTERVIEW WITH PRODUCER ALAN SIEVEWRIGHT
BBC Four: Why did you decide to make a documentary about Callas?
Alan Sievewright: There have been programmes about her being a great actress/singer. We wanted to show that she was first and foremost an important musician - her influence was colossal. The secret of her drama lay in the understanding of the music. I've talked to Leonard Bernstein, I knew Carlo Maria Giulini rather well - they never said anything about tantrums. The reason they called Callas the "Tigress", was a misuse of an Italian saying. She said, "He who rides the tiger can seldom dismount". She meant that the public is a tiger - they will eat you up if you come off its back.
BBC Four: Can you talk a little about the structure of the programme?
AS: We've based the programme around Franco Zeffirelli's film of Tosca. As only act two survives we've animated the stills to give a much clearer idea of what act one and act three were like. The soundtrack is all from the live performance. We hope to add another whole hour to a DVD.
BBC Four: You've got an incredible cast of interviewees including Zeffirelli and Placido Domingo, how did you manage to get them together?
AS: Placido Domingo is a very old friend of mine and it just so happened that he was singing at the Rome Opera, in the very theatre where Tosca had its world premiere. We filmed him in the auditorium demonstrating what Callas does with the music.
| I'm delighted that Dame Judi Dench is in this film. I was questioned why and said, "Because people aren't in boxes". She had done her Romeo and Juliet with Franco Zeffirelli two years before the Callas Tosca. |
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Alan Sievewright with Judi Dench
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I know that Maria Callas would get on a plane to London any time she knew Paul Scofield was going to appear on stage. I know that Rudolph Nureyev would talk to you about opera: they're all interconnected.
BBC Four: What was so very special about Callas?
AS: Her range as a dramatic musical character was quite tremendous and she had this wonderful quality of pathos. She was a very fast learner, but that wasn't enough, she'd go back into it and go deeper and deeper, and of course it brought the best out in her colleagues, unless they wanted to shirk. With due respect to my Greek friends, she was absolutely always on time and prepared. She also had enough belief in her musical knowledge to question conductors.
BBC Four: The documentary shows very clearly that she was incredibly focused on music, but after she met Onassis she gave it up, why was that?
AS: There are various ideas. Franco Zeffirelli told me that Onassis said some very cruel things. He said "You've got a whistle in your throat and it doesn't work". Can you imagine demeaning someone at a dinner table like that? Tito Gobbi [Scarpia in Tosca] made it very clear, he said, "She never lost her voice, she lost her confidence" and the loss of confidence and the loss of breath and the loss of a number of other things…she needed to find her way back.
| Callas was also upset by the famous fiasco at the Rome Opera. She was genuinely ill, the President of Italy knew it, and the management made the great mistake of coming to her at the end of act one and asking her to perform anyway.
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Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi
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This opera happened to be Norma, the pinnacle of its kind in Italian work. Well, she took tremendous umbrage to that; she was not well. She sued the Rome Opera, it took many years and it turned out she was right and they were wrong. But by that time the damage was done to her reputation, it was done to her spirit.
BBC Four: Callas' success was not overnight, why do you think it took a while for her talent to be recognised?
AS: I've heard her voice described as having a heavy, oily quality to it, it was a lot of work getting a voice like that bright and she had some marvellous conductors to work with, including Tullio Serafin, Vittorio Gui and later Karajan. We owe a great debt to Walter Legge because he went out on a limb with Columbia Records and said, "If you don't put this woman under contract I'm leaving". When the voice was bright, however, she was able to do incredible, brilliant things with the fast notes, the coloratura, the fiddly bits, it really meant something. They're not there as decoration, they're there for a genuine, emotional reason. A trill either means fear or it means joy. All those Pop Idols are using broken notes and I rather think we should give them some bicarbonate of soda to stop the hiccups. They are copying while people like Callas are original and know what they're doing.
