From the archive, 17 September 1977: Callas the divine is dead

Maria Callas, the opera singer who put as much passion into her life as into her art, died in her Paris flat yesterday of a heart attack. She was 53. The “divine Callas” was the international symbol of prima donnas, as much for her incomparable voice as for her tantrums and her long love affair with the Greek ship owner Aristotle Onassis.

She had not appeared on stage in the last four years. Friends said her obsession with her weight and vigorous dieting have contributed to her sudden death. She was plagued by weight problems all her life. At 20, she weighed 15 stones. In the fifties she had to crash-diet, losing more than four stones in a few weeks, so that she could take leading romantic roles.

Her close friend, Lord Harewood, managing director of the English National Opera Company, yesterday described stories of her temperamental outbursts as “exaggerated.” But, he added, “the legend will live on. She was a truly great artist. I doubt if we will ever see another like her in our time. She was unique. She was much better in person than on records. The records do not do her justice.” He said Callas never sang in private - “she was an artist for the large stage.”

In Barcelona, soprano Victoria de los Angeles burst into tears at the news of Callas’s death. “Something very, very important has gone, for the world of music, for art - in spite of all that has been said about her.”

Maria Callas was the daughter of a Brooklyn Greek-American chemist called Kalogeropoulos and began her singing lessons at the age of eight. She was 15 when her parents divorced. She went to Greece with her mother and continued her studies at the Athens Conservatoire.

From her debut in the Athens Royal Opera it seemed that despite her exceptional voice her weight would preclude her from taking the best operatic roles.

Her eventual success was partly due to the encouragement of her husband, Italian industrialist Gian Battista Meneghini, whom she left in 1959 after 11 years.

Her voice, which ranged over three octaves, fascinated music lovers, and she was also a dramatic actress of exceptional talent, starring in Pasolini’s Medea in 1970.

But her fame grew also through a series of dramatic incidents both on stage and in her love affair with Onassis - “the big love in my life.” She lost her voice several times and broke down on stage on a number of occasions, once in front of the Italian President.

She did not marry Onassis, she once said, because “love is much better when you are not married.” She said she bore no ill will to Jackie Kennedy, and took the marriage “in her stride.”

But Mr Harold Rosenthal, editor of Opera, the leading opera magazine, said yesterday that the ending of the romance and Onassis’s subsequent marriage to Jackie Kennedy had affected Callas “psychologically.”

“It had a big effect on her. It was a case of her musical life being subdued by her personal life. It was a great tragedy because in the decade 1952-1962 she more or less single-handed revitalised Italian opera.”

Nevertheless, the red-haired singer kept in the news and retained her popularity during her retirement from the stage for eight years until 1973. Her brief European tour, when she sang for the public for the last time in Paris, was a triumph despite obvious voice problems.”

The last image of Maria Callas was given yesterday by her artistic director, Michel Glotz, who saw her soon after she collapsed in her bathroom and died in her bed. “It was the image of La Traviata as she played it in 1956 at La Scala,” he said. “Her face has not even one wrinkle. She has the air that she is only resting.”