Maria Callas is one of the greatest icons of gay history and culture. She possessed all the requirements that other icons like Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis and even Doris Day had to qualify for this special admiration. She was, specifically speaking, a woman of enormous talent who had the unique ability of looking either stunningly beautiful or unspeakably hideous, who delivered the one-liners and temper tantrums that inevitably scream for and attract attention when properly delivered, and lastly but most importantly, who exuded a wonderfully profound campness which, together with her acute sense of timing, she exploited in her performances and recordings to great dramatic and financial success.
Set against this context is a profusion of publications, which tend to fall into two stereotypical categories of attitudes, the let's-get-it-straight and the let's-get-rich. Callas queens relentlessly pursue the former in the hope of expanding their ever-growing library of Callasobilia and never speak of the latter in less-than-vitriolic terms. The latter either prey on falsified and hyperbolised accounts of her antics or devote their pages to reducing her to a pitiful shadow of the legend. Daunting as this reception is, Michael Scott has written a book which patently attempts to escape either classification in his search for veracity. The questions are, does he succeed and was it worth it?
In many ways he does succeed. The book is quite dry and relatively devoid of personal analysis. When confronted with a situation which is severally, ambiguously and even conflictingly accounted, his is the safe option of offering all accounts and leaving it to the reader to exercise editorial control. Fair but rather cowardly, seeing as you paid for the control to be made on your behalf.
Then there are the offensive suggestions that spring up from time to time in the book. Scott attempts to define the bond between the diva and Luchino Visconti as not sexual, in spite of Visconti's claim that it was. One of the few analyses that Scott makes is that this sounded a typical piece of homosexual self-aggrandisement. The artistic bond between the two had resulted in some of the most exhilarating moments in operatic history and to distract from this unique collaboration by casting sexual slurs is myopic. Given Callas' appeal to gay fans, this remark also throws doubt on Scott's objectivity. For too long, writers have ignored or overlooked our financial and moral support of serious efforts at documenting her life and work. We are legion and deserve some recognition, not insult.
In his attempt to achieve documentary independence, Scott seems to have applied quite a heavy hand to charting the downfall of her vocal abilities. There is a rather weak link between slimness (he makes a dreadful pun of referring to thin voices) and vocal decline so better watch out, Sumi Jo and Lesley Garrett. Using this as a theoretical basis, he then, almost gleefully, recounts how the voice wobbled, the colours diminished and the top notes creaked. Point taken, but what about the sheer enjoyment that her audience was still experiencing from her performances? And how did Scott manage to describe the historic recording of La Traviata in Lisbon as routine, and Kraus' Alfredo as stiffly sung?
The list of disagreements could continue ad nauseum. His research is exhaustive though and it must be said that Michael Scott has succeeded in writing a very comprehensive chronological record of her performances and of the surviving recordings. The soul of the book, however, seems somewhat pessimistic, a contrast to the work of the artiste who rewrote the rules of operatic convention to the delight of millions, an enjoyment that persists even after her death.
Norman Yap
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
