Maria Callas: La Divina - A Portrait

Directed by Tony Palmer for Melvyn Bragg's British television South Bank Show, this doco on Callas uses interviews with those that new the Greek soprano, news footage and Callas herself talking intercut in time with footage of her singing, often with the choice of music commenting on her life, though regrettably none of the music is identified for us. Much is made of the music of perhaps Maria's greatest triumph, Tosca, and the tragedy of Maria being the dichotomy of her identity as a voice and her need for a life as a woman, with the Onassis affair juxtaposed with the music of Carmen.

Like all great artists it seems, Maria was racked with fear about the prospect of performing, partly because as she says "Every time I go out there, they are waiting to get me" - a comment on the nature of operatic audiences, and partly because as a perfectionist she couldn't bear to give less than her best, explaining her notorious cancellations and walkouts due to illness. Maria began her career with the obstacles of being fat, ungraceful, shy, having a stage mother, a jealous sister, and a voice that her 1947 Verona conductor Serafin described as "great and ugly". However her legacy is that changed the nature of opera singing from simply delivering recitals to giving dramatic performances, and thereby made opera more accessible. Purists might find fault with Maria's voice, and she was subjected to much criticism because of it, but never her acting. Giuseppe di Steffano is seen valiantly defending the perceived "artistic disasters" of their 1970's concerts, saying that the public still adored her, and though the footage shows her voice is not what it once was, it is still remarkable.

Maria's physical transformation is said to have been inspired by seeing Audrey Hepburn filming Roman Holiday. She lost 37 kg, although she was still unhappy with her ankles, which is the reason given why she never performed Carmen on stage. This streamlined Callas allowed her to be admired also for her beauty and the career marriage to Battista Meneghini gave way to her sexual relationship with Aristotle Onassis. That Onassis viewed her as a possession, much like having "dead" celebrities like Winston Churchill and Garbo as guests, is doubly ironic, since Callas' destiny was tied to a man who did not appreciate her. He may have regretted marrying Jackie Kennedy instead of Maria, and kept in contact with her, but general opinion is that Onassis used Callas and moved on to Jackie as a political manoeuver.

The footage of paparazzi around Maria, with one scene of reporters and cameras tracking her at an airport painful to watch because of their indifference to her objections, and Onassis give Callas the tabloid appeal of other artists like Judy Garland, and Garbo, who also were thought to have deprived us of themselves at their prime. The story of the abortion of Onassis' child, Maria asked to direct an opera about a singer who has lost their voice, the feature film of Medea where her speaking voice is dubbed, and the candid street photos of Maria in Paris looking feral and practically unrecognisable all make her last chapter border on Grand Guignol. The Garland parallel is apt in Maria's similar insomnia, suicide attempts, her gay following, and drug taking towards the end. Franco Zefferelli testifies that what made her great was that on stage she was "possessed", evidence once again of the tissue thin line between genius and madness.

Every woman is convinced that some part of her body is a disaster. As a young woman, Maria Callas was told, not untruthfully, that the whole of her body was a disaster. Then she saw the impact Audrey Hepburn made, while shooting 'Roman Holiday', and decided to shed most of her bulk. That was one half of her transformation, quite as dramatic as anything that happened in her operas. The other half was falling in love for the only time, at thirty-five, turning her at last into a confident, graceful, glamorous figure (though she still thought her ankles were ugly, which they weren't, and kept turning down the role of Carmen, because it required her to dance.)

The problem was her choice of lover, Aristotle Onassis, who had apparently given her a lot of pillow-talk about eternal love. When he traded her in, quite casually one day, for Jacqueline Kennedy, she was shattered beyond hope, and would never be the true Callas again. Her addiction to sleeping pills seemed like a rehearsal for early death, commented one close colleague.

We can well remember her victim-talk at the time, her pang of regret that she had surrendered herself to him before demanding marriage. Otherwise she might have been one of the world's richest wives (though the evidence suggests that it would not have been a happy experience.) But Callas was no naive teenager. She was almost into midlife, and evidently a poor judge of men and situations. Her own marriage of convenience, to an obvious sugar-daddy (Giovanni Meneghini), had provided the funds for her extensive international training. And now a man had simply used and abused her in the same cynical spirit. A victim she was not.

This Greek tragedy, as it inevitably became known, is well-handled by director Tony Palmer, though we feel a bit put-out by his failure to identify most of these well-informed commentators and interviewees - too often for it to be coincidence. It's obviously a deliberate stylistic, and I suppose it could be called creative, though for some reason, the baritone Tito Gobbi and Callas's biographer John Ardoin are named, and the end-frame says 'With thanks to...' four other people.

Still, we get plenty of chances to see what made her special: a perfectionism that often caused her to cancel performances when she was feeling just a fraction below her best, yet refusing to allow understudies, believing that nobody could double for the great Callas. Here is a good spread of arias, and a clip from her one film (Medea) that suggested acting talent independent of opera. Perhaps that is how she developed the innovation she is always credited with: taking opera-singing beyond recital and into drama.