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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Looks great, but ultimately disappoints, May 26, 1999
This review is from: MARIA CALLAS: Sacred Monster (Hardcover)
I picked up this handsome new book on my favorite singer with great anticipation. Just leafing through it whetted the appetite - wonderful pictures, lots of them, many of which I had never seen before. And the size of the book promised much - here would be a major reading wallow in Callasiana. And, of course, it had been some years since a major book on Callas had appeared. All the omens looked good, and I plunged in. Ultimately, the book proved a major disappointment, for reasons discussed below. But first, the positives. As noted above, the photographs are a real treat, primarily because many of them have never appeared before now. Particularly in her early roles, we see new pictures of Callas, some of them quite beautiful. And there are photographs from the famous productions that have so far not achieved circulation. Galatopoulos also manages to present a coherent and reasonably detailed narrative of Callas' life and art, albeit with a great deal of recyling of (by now) very familiar incidents and quotes that have been retold so often that most readers of the Callas literature can recite them in their sleep. The author has some interesting, if not exactly original, comments on Callas' art and on her place in, and impact on, the operatic scene. There also is a new spin on Callas' relationship with Onassis, which the author contends was not the principal reason why the diva's career began to contract beginning in 1959. Most writers on Callas have taken the view that her relationship with Onassis distracted her from her artistic mission, portraying him as an abusive, philistine, domineering male chauvinist pig and casting him as Principal Villain in the Callas saga. Galatopoulos maintains that Callas' and Onassis' relationship was much more complex than has been portrayed and that Onassis was not nearly so bad as he has been made out to be. Among other things, the author scoffs at the report that Onassis forced Callas to have an abortion, an allegation that first surfaced in Arianna Stassinopoulos' 1982 biography of Callas. Galatopoulos also maintains that Callas was not nearly as forlorned, abandoned and depressed in her last years as some have maintained, and he decries the "soap opera" portrait of Callas that has become the received view of this time in her life. The author's new take on "L'affaire Onassis" and Callas' last years is based on conversations the author had with Callas in the 1970's. And herein lies the problem. Much of this book is taken up with what purport to be quotes of conversations the author had with Callas on a wide variety of subjects, from her approach to her art to her relationships with Onassis and her mother. Galatopoulos will state, "Callas told me," and then there will follow a lengthy indented paragraph that clearly is intended as a verbatim quotation from Callas. The problem is, one doubts that it is. In the first place, one presumes that Galatopoulos was not taping Callas while she discussed intimate details of her life. This being the case, we are asked to believe that the author recalls, virtually word for word, conversations he had as long as twenty years ago. It simply strains credulity. Moreover, on a number of occasions, Galatopoulos says that Callas "told me" and then goes on to quote her making statements that the alert Callas reader will instantly recognize as being from other, previously published interviews Callas gave to other people, such as Lord Harewood in his BBC interview with Callas in the late 1960's. For example, Galatopoulos claims that Callas "told him" about some insights about operatic acting that she received early in her career from one Roberto Mordo. This "quote," which the author claims Callas "told him," is lifted almost verbatim from an interview Callas gave to Edward Downes during a Metropolitan Opera matinee broadcast. Theoretically, I suppose it is possible that Callas, by coincidence, said almost the exact same things to the author, word for word, as she said to Harewood and Downes. But again, it strains credulity past the breaking point. There are two reasons this matters and why it seriously compromises this book as a reliable biography of Callas. First, in any serious biography, quotes mean something: the author is representing to the reader that what he is reading is what the person quoted actually said. One simply cannot believe that Callas (and Serafin, and others) actually said to Galatopoulos what he claims they said. Second, because these quotes from Callas are the basis for much of Galatoloulos most interesting "takes" on her life, and because the quotes themselves are so suspect, one is left questioning the credibility of the author and, consequently, of these new accounts of Callas' life. If a biographer's credibility is compromised, then so is the value of his biography. This unfortunate situation is not helped by the virtual absence of any footnotes or attributions throughout the book. There are many quotes, but often one does not know where they come from. Are they quotes from published sources? Statements made to the author? Did the author simply make them up? One simply does not know what to think. The tragedy is, this book could have been truly valuable for shedding new light on Callas' life - no mean accomplishment, considering all that has been written about her. Unfortunately, one ends up wondering, "Did Callas really say that?" Not a very good thing for a book that purports to be based largely on Callas' own words. One wonders if there was an editor anywhere in sight when this book was being readied for publication. Nevertheless, Callas fans will snatch this book up, and indeed there is much to enjoy. Just when frustration with the author is building to a crescendo, there are always those pretty pictures to distract. And, of course, there is the endlessly fascinating Callas herself and her treasurable legacy of recordings.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
My own private Callas., July 15, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: MARIA CALLAS: Sacred Monster (Hardcover)
I found this book deplorable. Badly written, it could have used a strong editorial hand both in the prose and the picture captions. Especially disapointing is the re-hashing of incidents that have long since been disproved or properly researched, i.e. Callas's first audition at the Metroplitan Opera, which resulted in no offer of work from that house. Likewise, the famous incident in Rome when Callas abandoned a performance of Norma. Galatopoulos claims there was uproar in the audience whilst she was singing, but a tape exists of this performance and there is no disturbance at all at that point. These are just two of a number of incidents in the book where the author does not seem to be able to relate information long and freely available to his own conception of what happened. It is a long established fact that Callas made her Italian debut on the 2nd August 1947, but Galatopoulos sticks to the innacurate date of 3rd August which was current well into the 1970's. [The Arena di Verona celebrated the 50th anniversary of Callas's debut on 2nd August 1997] This gave me the distinct impression the author felt that he and he alone was/is THE authority on Callas and there isn't any need for him to read anyone else's scholarship on the subject. Fortunately he isn't and I had the feeling, shored up by all those verbatim conversations, this tome was simply an attempt to present the author's version of "My own private Callas." Another area of the book I found disturbing is the photographic content. I found it impossible to identify Callas in her first stage role, the picture is simply not clear enough. Whereas Callas is easily identified as Brunnhilde are those pictures of Isolde really Callas? There is one photograph supposedly of Callas in I Puritani but there is a small child in the picture with her, and the lady in the picture, wearing an off the shoulder dress, does not look like Callas. I leave readers to form their own opinions. Maria Callas is an on-going phenomena, her voice is as inspiring and awesomely thought provoking now as it ever was. There are now generations of people who never heard or saw her live, there are only recordings and old films. A few authors; John Ardoin, Gerald Fitzgerald, Henry Wisneski and Michael Scott have shed new light on Callas the singer and Callas the woman with serious scholarship for future generations. Stelios Galatopoulos's work is not in this league.
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31 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
With a friend like this who needs enemies?, November 22, 1999
This review is from: MARIA CALLAS: Sacred Monster (Hardcover)
There's not much to recommend this book. Some of the photographs look as if they've been smeared across the pages. Others are clearly NOT Callas at all, and one has been so badly cropped as to make Callas appear to be juggling balls whilst singing Iphigenie. The text reads as if it was written for Woman's Weekly in Athens and would have benefitted from a very strong editorial hand. The author claims to have been a friend of Callas. Really - One's friends! Throw a stick at the Met or Covent Garden [when it re-opens] or the Paris Opera and you will hit six people who could put together a better biography than this, and without the many somewhat spurious 'Callas told me's' with which this book is littered. To date this is the author's fourth attempt at Callas biography, [and should get some sort of an award for so gallantly persisting in a task for which he so clearly unsuited] and whilst the information has changed from one edition to another, and the grammar and prose has improved [and, believe me, that's not saying much at all] I do hope this is his last book on his 'friend' until he does a little more research and just some plain old fashioned observation of photographs. I had the feeling that the author feels he 'owns' Callas, with all the obsessiveness and lack of insight of a stalking fan. Search out the magical Thames & Hudson Callas by Fitzgerald and Ardoin, or Ardoin's Callas Legacy, and Michael Scott's Maria Meneghini Callas is a must.
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