Athens. In Plaka even two-star hotels have the Acropolis as a view, an Italian restaurant offers linguine with clams wrapped in lemon cream, there are lucky eyes everywhere and life is still authentic, sustainable. We are in Athens for the inauguration of Maria Callas Museum, desired by all those who have had anything to do with the soprano, finally realized in her homeland, she is a New Yorker of Greek origins, Greek to the core, to the end. Her ashes, or presumed to be such considering an accident even after cremation, are in the Aegean to arrive, at least in this way, in Skorpios, where Aristotle Onassis is buried. Aristo, as she called him, who would have made her start the battle for the divorce when he wasn’t in Italy, since 1959.
On a wall of the Museum we find them close together: the most famous Greek sailor in the world at the time and the Venetian entrepreneur who was Maria Callas’ first and only husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini. In the portraits chosen for this corner of a place that has come very well, to be visited, one of the two is smiling, Gascon, he has the world in his pocket; the other, wearing a tuxedo fit for theater premieres, has a perplexed expression.
The guide is the president of the Museum, Liana Skourli. «I went to the opera for the first time when I was eight, with Maria Callas. I met her at twenty-three, when she came to the Kennedy Center in Washington to sing. I spent two days with her as her French secretary » she explains. «I was in Paris the weekend she died. And I decided to get involved in the museum, at the request of the mayor of Athens, to preserve her legacy. I donated my collection of her to the museum, which I collected over thirty years, from various auctions.”
At the entrance we find, on the left, a rich bookshop and a café, open to everyone with windows full of Callas that attract anyone who passes by this building. The museum itinerary, on several floors, offers an immersive experience, The Callas Experience, starting from a statement by the tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano, friend, scene partner, also at the center of the gossip that persecuted the soprano. «Listen to it even once and you won’t forget it» is the quote, in English, by Di Stefano.
And so, we immerse ourselves, through Callas’ voice, in an enchanted forest scenario, in three of her stellar performances: Tosca, Norma, La Traviata. On the same level, your experience as a teacher at Juilliard in New York, but how do you convey being Maria Callas?
Other works that stand out include a bust of Paulina Cassimatis, donated by the Maria Callas Greek Society. The caption says, quoting the soprano: «I would have liked to be Maria, but there is La Callas who asks that I carry on with her dignity». And then, scores, glasses – which he did not like to wear in public -, letters like the one to Aristo for his last birthday in which he declared his great eternal love for him, his recordings, the few remaining videos with his performances, a also a portrait of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the love that is independent of bodies and therefore not inferior to other bonds, and a spectacular view, while toasting with the wine “La Divina”, in front of the authorities of this city and this country, synonymous with culture.
The best piece, in its own way an installation in the style of Marina Abramovi?, who in fact embodied Callas on stage, are her hair. A famous hairdresser kept some of her hair and had it authenticated by an expert, who confirmed that it was indeed her hair: short, on her shoulders, in the Onassis period, who preferred it that way and she satisfied him; long and streaked with gray towards the end, before she died (almost) alone at fifty-three; preserved after a cut for a party, to be returned, like everything that concerns it, to history.
How should Maria Callas be remembered, one hundred years after her birth? «Like the soprano who brought theater and drama to opera. She was happy only when the public showed her their great love and closeness, with her applause and appreciation. She was also happy when she discovered that her beloved Aristo loved her. She was always very insecure because she had not received true love from her mother »says Skourli. «The great Maria Callas died unhappy, but our love and our adoration will keep her memory alive forever and will make her her eternal legacy. I would like to remember her like this: the immortal Mary who sacrificed everything for art and love.”
#Casa #Callas #temple #Divine
– 2024-04-29 05:39:01
