title: Irreligion

text: In a study of religious trends in 49 countries from 1981 to 2019, Inglehart and Norris found an overall increase in religiosity from 1981 to 2007. Respondents in 33 of 49 countries rated themselves higher on a scale from one to ten when asked how important God was in their lives. This increase occurred in most former communist and developing countries, but also in some high-income countries. A sharp reversal of the global trend occurred from 2007 to 2019, when 43 out of 49 countries studied became less religious. This reversal appeared across most of the world. The United States was a dramatic example of declining religiositywith the mean rating of importance of religion dropping from 8.2 to 4.6while India was a major exception. Research in 1989 recorded disparities in religious adherence for different faith groups, with people from Christian and tribal traditions leaving religion at a greater rate than those from Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist faiths.


title: Irreligion

text: Inglehart and Norris speculate that the decline in religiosity comes from a decline in the social need for traditional gender and sexual norms, ("virtually all world religions instilled" pro-fertility norms such as "producing as many children as possible and discouraged divorce, abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and any sexual behavior not linked to reproduction" in their adherents for centuries) as life expectancy rose and infant mortality dropped. They also argue that the idea that religion was necessary to prevent a collapse of social cohesion and public morality was belied by lower levels of corruption and murder in less religious countries. They argue that both of these trends are based on the theory that as societies develop, survival becomes more secure: starvation, once pervasive, becomes uncommon; life expectancy increases; murder and other forms of violence diminish. As this level of security rises, there is less social/economic need for the high birthrates that religion encourages and less emotional need for the comfort of religious belief. Change in acceptance of "divorce, abortion, and homosexuality" has been measured by the World Values Survey and shown to have grown throughout the world outside of Muslim-majority countries.


title: Devon Sawa

text: Devon Edward Sawa (born September 7, 1978) is a Canadian actor. Sawa began acting when he was a teenager and appeared in several films in the 1990s including "Little Giants", "Casper", "Now and Then", "Wild America", "Idle Hands", and "Final Destination". He also played the title character of the Eminem music video "Stan" and starred as Owen Elliot in The CW action spy drama series "Nikita".


title: Devon Sawa

text: Sawa was born on September 7, 1978, in Vancouver, the son of Joyce and Edward Sawa, a mechanic. He has two older siblings. His father is Polish, and his mother is "a little bit of everything".


title: Devon Sawa

text: Sawa began his career in 1992 as a children's action toy spokesman. He made his film debut in "Little Giants" in 1994 and received wide recognition for playing the title role as a human boy in "Casper" the following year. In "Now and Then", Sawa played the town bully, Scott Wormer. Sawa also appeared in the films "Wild America", "Idle Hands", and "Final Destination". In 2000, Sawa played the title character of the Eminem music video "Stan". Sawa later did voice acting, voicing Flash Thompson in "". Sawa continued to work steadily in the 2000s and appeared in several independent films, including "Extreme Dating", "Shooting Gallery", "Devil's Den", "Creature Of Darkness", "Endure", "388 Arletta Avenue", "The Philly Kid", and "A Resurrection".


title: Devon Sawa

text: In 2010, Sawa portrayed the role of Owen Elliott on The CW action drama series "Nikita". In July 2012, he was promoted to series regular in the third season of "Nikita"; the show ended after four seasons in 2013. In 2017, Sawa portrayed the role of Nico Jackson in "Somewhere Between"; the show ended after one season. Sawa appeared as Lester Clark Jr. in "". In 2019, he starred in the thriller "The Fanatic", where he played Hunter Dunbar, an actor who is stalked by a character named Moose. The movie was directed by Limp Bizkit vocalist Fred Durst.


title: Devon Sawa

text: Sawa is married to Canadian producer Dawni Sahanovitch. They wed in 2013. They have two children together, a son born in 2014 and a daughter born in 2016.


title: Devon Sawa

text: In June 2022, Sawa gave a lengthy interview to "The Independent", where he said that he sought out roles in which the character smoked marijuana to help get away from his teen heartthrob status which began with "Casper". Sawa also said that between 2004 and 2009, he "drank a lot" until going sober after meeting his wife in Vancouver.


title: Alan Rickman on screen and stage

text: Alan Rickman was an English actor of the stage and screen. Rickman gained international acclaim for his role as Severus Snape in the "Harry Potter film series" (2001–2011) and Hans Gruber in the action film "Die Hard" (1988). He is also known for his performances in films such as the romance drama "Truly, Madly, Deeply" (1991), "" (1991), Ang Lee's adaptation of the Jane Austen novel "Sense and Sensibility" (1995), Neil Jordan's historical drama "Michael Collins" (1995), Richard Curtis' romantic comedy "Love Actually" (2003), and the science fiction comedies "Galaxy Quest" (1999) and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (2005).


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: Efraim Diveroli (born December 20, 1985) is an American former arms dealer and author. His company, AEY Inc., was a major weapons contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense. The U.S. government suspended AEY for violating its contract after AEY provided Chinese ammunition and attempted to hide the origins by repackaging it as being from Hungary, thus violating the American arms embargo against China. As a result of the publicity surrounding the contract and the age of the arms dealers – Diveroli was 21 and partner David Packouz was 25 when AEY landed the ammunition deal – the United States Army began a review of its contracting procedures.


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: Diveroli was sentenced to four years in federal prison. He is a central subject of the Todd Phillips dramedy film "War Dogs", released in 2016, as well as a memoir written in conjunction with convicted fraudster Matthew Cox and published in 2016.


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: Diveroli was born on December 20, 1985, in Miami Beach, Florida, the son of Ateret and Michael Diveroli. The family was Orthodox Jewish, strictly observing all traditional Jewish laws. He studied at Hebrew Academy in Miami Beach, His grandfather, Yoav Botach, was one of the wealthiest property owners in Los Angeles, and his uncle is celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach.


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: Diveroli returned home to Miami Beach Florida, in March 2001 at the age of fifteen. After an argument with his uncle, he told his father he wanted to open a business specializing in arms, ammunition trading, and defense contracts with the U.S. government. He convinced his father to sell him a shell company, AEY, Inc., named after the first initials of him and his siblings, which his father had incorporated as a small printing business, but had not done anything with for years. Diveroli showed a penchant for arms dealing and quickly made a name for himself within the industry. His young age and apparent talent led local media outlets to label him as an "arms wunderkind." Diveroli struggled with drug addiction and was also labeled as a "stoner arms dealer" by the media.


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: During the Cold War, the world engaged in an protracted and massive arms race. Millions of weapons were stockpiled throughout Eastern Europe, ready for a war with the West. When the Cold War ended, and the immediate threat of violence subsided, arms dealers started moving these vast amounts of weapons. The sales that followed formed the "gray market" where non-state actors (such as militia or terrorist groups) and legitimate government-sanctioned buyers could procure arms through illegal foreign government sales. "The Pentagon needed access to this new aftermarket to arm the militias it was creating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trouble was, it couldn't go into such a murky underworld on its own. It needed proxies to do its dirty work — companies like AEY."


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: Diveroli started working during this period of heavy arms trading as a teenager in a one-room apartment in Miami. Equipped with nothing more than a laptop, he sought to enter the industry from the seat of his couch. He began surfing solicitations on fbo.gov, or FedBizOpps, which is a government website where contracts are posted. He began by bidding on small contracts with the financial help of Ralph Merrill, with whom he did business during his time working for his uncle. By the age of eighteen, Diveroli had become a millionaire by continuing to beat out big corporations like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed and BAE Systems. In the words of "Rolling Stone", Diveroli had "an appetite for risk and all-devouring ambition."


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: After steadily increasing the size of his contracts and developing a track record of success, Diveroli's company AEY, Inc. was awarded a $298 million contract by the Pentagon to provide arms and munitions to the allied forces in Afghanistan. To fulfill the US government contracts, Diveroli soon found himself dealing with dubious weapons traders, crooked diplomats, and soldiers of fortune; negotiating deals with foreign defense ministers, holding meetings at embassies, and taking calls from high-ranking Army officials.


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: On March 27, 2008, the U.S. government suspended AEY Inc. for infringing upon the terms of its contract; in violation of a pre-existing arms embargo, the company was accused of supplying ammunition manufactured in China to the Afghan National Army and police. United States Army documents showed that the company totaled more than $200 million in contracts to supply ammunition, rifles, and other weapons in 2007. As a result of publicity surrounding the contract, the United States Army began a review of its contracting procedures.


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: The United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform ruled the ammunition "unserviceable". AEY had also failed to perform on numerous previous contracts, including sending potentially unsafe helmets and failure to deliver 10,000 Beretta pistols to Iraq.


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: Diveroli's former partner, David Packouz, and Ralph Merrill, the group's former chief financier, later filed separate lawsuits against Diveroli seeking payment of millions of dollars they say they were owed in connection to the weapons contract with the U.S. government.


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: A company Diveroli owns, Ammoworks, continued selling arms while he awaited trial for conspiracy. In late August 2008, he pleaded guilty on one count of conspiracy, and was sentenced to four years in prison on January 4, 2011. He was further sentenced for possessing a weapon while out on bond and had his overall sentence reduced for assisting in the investigation of the prosecution.


title: Efraim Diveroli

text: The story of Diveroli's arms deals is the subject of the Todd Phillips comedy/drama film "War Dogs", starring Jonah Hill as Diveroli and Miles Teller as his partner, David Packouz, which was based on the reporting done by Canadian journalist Guy Lawson for "Rolling Stone". In 2016, Diveroli filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., director Todd Phillips, producer Bradley Cooper, and others, seeking to block release of the film. Diveroli's suit against Warner Bros. claimed that the basis for the film was taken from his self-published memoir "Once A Gun Runner", which convicted real estate fraudster Matthew Cox claims to have written while in prison with Diveroli.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Sir Walter Raleigh (; – 29 October 1618) was an English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America, suppressed rebellion in Ireland, helped defend England against the Spanish Armada and held political positions under Elizabeth I.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh was born to a Protestant family in Devon, the son of Walter Raleigh and Catherine Champernowne. He was the younger half-brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and a cousin of Sir Richard Grenville. Little is known of his early life, though in his late teens he spent some time in France taking part in the religious civil wars. In his 20s he took part in the suppression of rebellion in the colonisation of Ireland; he also participated in the siege of Smerwick. Later, he became a landlord of property in Ireland and mayor of Youghal in East Munster, where his house still stands in Myrtle Grove. He rose rapidly in the favour of Queen Elizabeth I and was knighted in 1585. He was granted a royal patent to explore Virginia, paving the way for future English settlements. In 1591, he secretly married Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, without the Queen's permission, for which he and his wife were sent to the Tower of London. After his release, they retired to his estate at Sherborne, Dorset.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1594, Raleigh heard of a "City of Gold" in South America and sailed to find it, publishing an exaggerated account of his experiences in a book that contributed to the legend of "El Dorado". After Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was again imprisoned in the Tower, this time for being involved in the Main Plot against King James I, who was not favourably disposed towards him. In 1616, he was released to lead a second expedition in search of El Dorado. During the expedition, men led by his top commander ransacked a Spanish outpost, in violation of both the terms of his pardon and the 1604 peace treaty with Spain. Raleigh returned to England and, to appease the Spanish, he was arrested and executed in 1618.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Little is known about Sir Walter Raleigh's birth but he is believed to have been born on 22 January 1552 (or possibly 1554). He grew up in the house of Hayes Barton (in the parish of East Budleigh), in East Devon. He was the youngest of the five sons of Walter Raleigh (1510–1581) (or Rawleigh) of Fardel Manor (in the parish of Cornwood), in South Devon. Raleigh's family is generally assumed to have been a junior branch of the Raleigh family, 11th-century lords of the manor of Raleigh, Pilton in North Devon, although the two branches are known to have borne entirely dissimilar coats of arms, adopted at the start of the age of heraldry (c. 1200–1215).


title: Walter Raleigh

text: His mother was Katherine Champernowne, the third wife of Walter Raleigh senior, and the fourth daughter of Sir Philip Champernowne (1479–1545), lord of the manor of Modbury, Devon, by his wife Catherine Carew, a daughter of Sir Edmund Carew (d.1513) of Mohuns Ottery (in the parish of Luppitt), Devon, and widow of Otes Gilbert (1513–1546/7) of Greenway (in the parish of Brixham) and of Compton Castle (in the parish of Marldon), both in Devon. (The coat of arms of Otes Gilbert and Katherine Champernowne survives in a stained glass window in Churston Ferrers Church, near Greenway.) Katherine Champernowne's paternal aunt was Kat Ashley, governess of Queen Elizabeth I, who introduced Raleigh and his brothers to the court. In addition, Raleigh's maternal uncle was Sir Arthur Champernowne (c. 1524–1578), a Member of Parliament, Sheriff of Devon and Admiral of the West. Walter Raleigh junior's immediate family included his full brother Carew Raleigh, and half-brothers John Gilbert, Humphrey Gilbert and Adrian Gilbert. As a consequence of their kinship with the Champernowne family, all of the Raleigh and Gilbert brothers became prominent during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh's family was highly Protestant in religious orientation and had a number of near escapes during the reign of Roman Catholic Queen Mary I of England. In the most notable of these, his father had to hide in a tower to avoid execution. As a result, Raleigh developed a hatred of Roman Catholicism during his childhood, and proved himself quick to express it after Protestant Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558. In matters of religion, Elizabeth was more moderate than her half-sister Mary.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1569, Raleigh left for France to serve with the Huguenots in the French religious civil wars. In 1572, Raleigh was registered as an undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford, but he left a year later without a degree. Raleigh proceeded to finish his education in the Inns of Court. In 1575, he was admitted to the Middle Temple, having previously been a member of Lyon's Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery. At his trial in 1603, he stated that he had never studied law. His life is uncertain between 1569 and 1575, but in his "History of the World" he claimed to have been an eyewitness at the Battle of Moncontour (3 October 1569) in France. In 1575 or 1576, Raleigh returned to England.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Between 1579 and 1583, Raleigh took part in the suppression of the Desmond Rebellions. He was present at the siege of Smerwick, where he led the party that beheaded some 600 Spanish and Italian soldiers. Raleigh received (approximately 0.2% of Ireland) upon the seizure and distribution of land following the attainders arising from the rebellion, including the coastal walled town of Youghal and, further up the Blackwater River, the village of Lismore. This made him one of the principal landowners and colonists in Munster, but he had limited success inducing English tenants to settle on his estates.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh made the town of Youghal his occasional home during his 17 years as an Irish landlord, frequently being domiciled at Killua Castle, Clonmellon, County Westmeath. He was mayor there from 1588 to 1589. His town mansion of Myrtle Grove is assumed to be the setting for the story that his servant doused him with a bucket of water after seeing clouds of smoke coming from Raleigh's pipe, in the belief that he had been set alight. But this story is also told of other places associated with Raleigh: the Virginia Ash Inn in Henstridge near Sherborne, Sherborne Castle, and South Wraxall Manor in Wiltshire, home of Raleigh's friend Sir Walter Long.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Amongst Raleigh's acquaintances in Munster was another Englishman who had been granted land in the Irish colonies, poet Edmund Spenser. In the 1590s, he and Raleigh travelled together from Ireland to the court at London, where Spenser presented part of his allegorical poem "The Faerie Queene" to Elizabeth I.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh's management of his Irish estates ran into difficulties which contributed to a decline in his fortunes. In 1602, he sold the lands to Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, who subsequently prospered under kings James I and Charles I. Following Raleigh's death, members of his family approached Boyle for compensation on the ground that Raleigh had struck an improvident bargain.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1584, Queen Elizabeth granted Raleigh a royal charter authorising him to explore, colonise and rule any "remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian Prince or inhabited by Christian People", in return for one-fifth of all the gold and silver that might be mined there. This charter specified that Raleigh had seven years in which to establish a settlement, or else lose his right to do so. Raleigh and Elizabeth intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World and a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain. Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to the Orinoco river basin in South America in search of the golden city of El Dorado. Instead, he sent others in 1585 to find the Roanoke Colony, later known as the "Lost Colony".


title: Walter Raleigh

text: These expeditions were funded primarily by Raleigh and his friends but never provided the steady stream of revenue necessary to maintain a colony in America. (Subsequent colonisation attempts in the early 17th century were made under the joint-stock Virginia Company, which was able to raise the capital necessary to create successful colonies.)


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1587, Raleigh attempted a second expedition, again establishing a settlement on Roanoke Island. This time, a more diverse group of settlers was sent, including some entire families, under the governance of John White. After a short while in America, White returned to England to obtain more supplies for the colony, planning to return in a year. Unfortunately for the colonists at Roanoke, one year became three. The first delay came when Queen Elizabeth I ordered all vessels to remain at port for potential use against the Spanish Armada. After England's 1588 victory over the Spanish Armada, the ships were given permission to sail.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: The second delay came after White's small fleet set sail for Roanoke and his crew insisted on sailing first towards Cuba in hopes of capturing treasure-laden Spanish merchant ships. Enormous riches described by their pilot, an experienced Portuguese navigator hired by Raleigh, outweighed White's objections to the delay.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: When the supply ship arrived in Roanoke, three years later than planned, the colonists had disappeared. The only clue to their fate was the word "CROATOAN" and the letters "CRO" carved into tree trunks. White had arranged with the settlers that if they should move, the name of their destination be carved into a tree or corner post. This suggested the possibility that they had moved to Croatoan Island, but a hurricane prevented John White from investigating the island for survivors. Other speculation includes their having starved, or been swept away or lost at sea during the stormy weather of 1588. No further attempts at contact were recorded for some years. Whatever the fate of the settlers, the settlement is now remembered as the "Lost Colony of Roanoke Island".


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In December 1581, Raleigh returned to England from Ireland as his company had been disbanded. He took part in court life and became a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I because of his efforts at increasing the Protestant Church in Ireland. In 1585, Raleigh was knighted and was appointed warden of the stannaries, that is of the tin mines of Cornwall and Devon, Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall and vice-admiral of the two counties. He was a member of parliament for Devonshire in 1585 and 1586. He was also granted the right to colonise America.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh commissioned shipbuilder R. Chapman of Deptford to build a ship for him. She was originally called "Ark" but became "Ark Raleigh", following the convention at the time by which the ship bore the name of her owner. The Crown (in the person of Queen Elizabeth I) purchased the ship from Raleigh in January 1587 for £5,000 (£ million in 2015). This took the form of a reduction in the sum that Sir Walter owed the queen; he received Exchequer tallies but no money. As a result, the ship was renamed "Ark Royal".


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In the Armada year of 1588, Raleigh had some involvement with defence against the Spanish at Devon. The ship that he had built, "Ark Royal", was Lord High Admiral Howard's flagship.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1592, Raleigh was given many rewards by the Queen, including Durham House in the Strand and the estate of Sherborne, Dorset. He was appointed Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard. However, he had not been given any of the great offices of state.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1591, Raleigh secretly married Elizabeth "Bess" Throckmorton (or Throgmorton). She was one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, 11 years his junior, and was pregnant at the time. She gave birth to a son, believed to be named Damerei, who was given to a wet nurse at Durham House, but he died in October 1592 of plague. Bess resumed her duties to the queen. The following year, the unauthorised marriage was discovered and the Queen ordered Raleigh to be imprisoned and Bess dismissed from court. Both were imprisoned in the Tower of London in June 1592. He was released from prison in August 1592 to manage a recently returned expedition and attack on the Spanish coast. The fleet was recalled by the Queen, but not before it captured an incredibly rich prize—a merchant ship (carrack) named "Madre de Deus" (Mother of God) off Flores. Raleigh was sent to organise and divide the spoils of the ship. He was sent back to the Tower, but by early 1593 had been released and become a member of Parliament.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: It was several years before Raleigh returned to favour, and he travelled extensively in this time. Raleigh and his wife remained devoted to each other. They had two more sons, Walter (known as Wat) in 1593 and Carew in 1605.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh was elected a burgess of Mitchell, Cornwall, in the parliament of 1593. He retired to his estate at Sherborne, where he built a new house, completed in 1594, known then as Sherborne Lodge. Since extended, it is now known as Sherborne New Castle. He made friends with the local gentry, such as Sir Ralph Horsey of Clifton Maybank and Charles Thynne of Longleat. During this period at a dinner party at Horsey's, Raleigh had a heated discussion about religion with Reverend Ralph Ironsides. The argument later gave rise to charges of atheism against Raleigh, though the charges were dismissed. He was elected to Parliament, speaking on religious and naval matters.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1594, he came into possession of a Spanish account of a great golden city at the headwaters of the Caroní River. A year later, he explored what is now Guyana and eastern Venezuela in search of Lake Parime and Manoa, the legendary city. Once back in England, he published "The Discovery of Guiana" (1596), an account of his voyage which made exaggerated claims as to what had been discovered. The book can be seen as a contribution to the El Dorado legend. Venezuela has gold deposits, but no evidence indicates that Raleigh found any mines. He is sometimes said to have discovered Angel Falls, but these claims are considered far-fetched.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1596, Raleigh took part in the capture of Cádiz, where he was wounded. He also served as the rear admiral (a principal command) of the Islands Voyage to the Azores in 1597. On his return from the Azores, Raleigh helped England defend itself against the major threat of the 3rd Spanish Armada during the autumn of 1597. The Armada was dispersed in the Channel and later was devastated by a storm off Ireland. Lord Howard of Effingham and Raleigh were able to organise a fleet that resulted in the capture of a Spanish ship in retreat carrying vital information regarding the Spanish plans.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1597 Raleigh was chosen as member of parliament for Dorset and in 1601 for Cornwall. He was unique in the Elizabethan period in sitting for three counties.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: From 1600 to 1603, as governor of the Channel Island of Jersey, Raleigh modernised its defences. This included the construction of a new fort protecting the approaches to Saint Helier, Fort Isabella Bellissima, or Elizabeth Castle.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Royal favour with Queen Elizabeth had been restored by this time, but his good fortune did not last; the Queen died on 24 March 1603. Raleigh was arrested on 19 July 1603 at what is now the Old Exeter Inn in Ashburton, charged with treason for his involvement in the Main Plot against Elizabeth's successor, James I, and imprisoned in the Tower of London.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh's trial began on 17 November in the converted Great Hall of Winchester Castle. Raleigh conducted his own defence. The chief evidence against him was the signed and sworn confession of his friend Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham. Raleigh repeatedly requested that Cobham be called to testify. "[Let] my acuser come face to face, and be deposed. Were the case but for a small copyhold, you would have witnesses or good proof to lead the jury to a verdict; and I am here for my life!" Raleigh argued that the evidence against him was "hearsay", but the tribunal refused to allow Cobham to testify and be cross-examined. Raleigh's trial has been regularly cited as influential in establishing a common law right to confront accusers in court. Raleigh was convicted, but King James spared his life.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: While imprisoned in the Tower, Raleigh wrote his incomplete "The Historie of the World". Using a wide array of sources in six languages, Raleigh was fully abreast of the latest continental scholarship. He wrote not about England, but of the ancient world with a heavy emphasis on geography. Despite his intention of providing current advice to the King of England, King James I complained that it was "too sawcie in censuring Princes". Raleigh remained imprisoned in the Tower until 1616. His son, Carew, was conceived and born (in 1604 or 1605) while Raleigh was imprisoned in the Tower.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1617, Raleigh was pardoned by the King and granted permission to conduct a second expedition to Venezuela in search of El Dorado. During the expedition, a detachment of Raleigh's men under the command of his long-time friend Lawrence Kemys attacked the Spanish outpost of Santo Tomé de Guayana on the Orinoco river, in violation of peace treaties with Spain and against Raleigh's orders. A condition of Raleigh's pardon was avoidance of any hostility against Spanish colonies or shipping. In the initial attack on the settlement, Raleigh's son, Walter, was fatally shot. Kemys informed Raleigh of his son's death and begged for forgiveness, but did not receive it, and at once committed suicide. On Raleigh's return to England, an outraged Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, demanded that Raleigh's death sentence be reinstated by King James, who had little choice but to do so. Raleigh was brought to London from Plymouth by Sir Lewis Stukley, where he passed up numerous opportunities to make an effective escape.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh was beheaded in the Old Palace Yard at the Palace of Westminster on 29 October 1618. "Let us dispatch", he said to his executioner. "At this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear." After he was allowed to see the axe that would be used to behead him, he mused: "This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries." According to biographers, Raleigh's last words, spoken to the hesitating executioner, were: "What dost thou fear? Strike, man, strike!"


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Thomas Hariot may have introduced him to tobacco. Having been one of the people to popularise tobacco smoking in England, he left a small tobacco pouch, found in his cell shortly after his execution. Engraved upon the pouch was a Latin inscription: "Comes meus fuit in illo miserrimo tempore" ("It was my companion at that most miserable time").


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh's head was embalmed and presented to his wife. His body was to be buried in the local church in Beddington, Surrey, the home of Lady Raleigh, but was finally laid to rest in St. Margaret's, Westminster, where his tomb is presently located. "The Lords", she wrote, "have given me his dead body, though they have denied me his life. God hold me in my wits." It has been said that Lady Raleigh kept her husband's head in a velvet bag until her death. After Raleigh's wife's death 29 years later, his head was removed to his tomb and interred at St. Margaret's Church. Although Raleigh's popularity had waned considerably since his Elizabethan heyday, his execution was seen by many, both at the time and since, as unnecessary and unjust, as for many years his involvement in the Main Plot seemed to have been limited to a meeting with Lord Cobham. One of the judges at his trial later said: "The justice of England has never been so degraded and injured as by the condemnation of the honourable Sir Walter Raleigh."


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh's poetry is written in the relatively straightforward, unornamented mode known as the plain style. C. S. Lewis considered Raleigh one of the era's "silver poets", a group of writers who resisted the Italian Renaissance influence of dense classical reference and elaborate poetic devices. His writing contains strong personal treatments of themes such as love, loss, beauty, and time. Most of his poems are short lyrics that were inspired by actual events.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In poems such as "What is Our Life" and "The Lie", Raleigh expresses a "contemptus mundi" (contempt of the world) attitude more characteristic of the Middle Ages than of the dawning era of humanistic optimism. But his lesser-known long poem "The Ocean's Love to Cynthia" combines this vein with the more elaborate conceits associated with his contemporaries Edmund Spenser and John Donne, expressing a melancholy sense of history. The poem was written during his imprisonment in the Tower of London.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh wrote a poetic response to Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" of 1592, entitled "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd". Both were written in the style of traditional pastoral poetry and follow the structure of six four-line stanzas employing a rhyme scheme of AABB, with Raleigh's an almost line-for-line refutation of Marlowe's sentiments. Years later, the 20th-century poet William Carlos Williams would join the poetic "argument" with his "Raleigh Was Right".


title: Walter Raleigh

text: In 1845, Shakespeare scholar Delia Bacon first proposed that a group of authors had actually written the plays later attributed to William Shakespeare, the main writer being Walter Raleigh. Later, George S. Caldwell asserted that Raleigh was actually the sole author. These claims have been supported by other scholars throughout subsequent years, including Albert J. Beveridge and Henry Pemberton, but are rejected by the majority of Shakespearean scholars today.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: The state capital of North Carolina, its second-largest city, was named Raleigh in 1792, after Sir Walter, sponsor of the Roanoke Colony. In the city, a bronze statue, which has been moved around different locations within the city, was cast in honour of the city's namesake. The "Lost Colony" is commemorated at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island, North Carolina.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Mount Raleigh in the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains in British Columbia, Canada, was named for him, with related features the Raleigh Glacier and Raleigh Creek named in association with the mountain. Mount Gilbert, just to Mount Raleigh's south, was named for his half-brother, Sir Humphrey.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh has been widely speculated to be responsible for introducing the potato to Europe, and was a key figure in bringing it to Ireland. However, modern historians dispute this claim, suggesting it would have been impossible for Raleigh to have discovered the potato in the places he visited.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Due to Raleigh's role in the popularisation of smoking, John Lennon humorously referred to him as "such a stupid git" in the song "I'm So Tired" on the "White Album" "The Beatles" (1968).


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Various colourful stories are told about him, such as laying his cloak over a puddle for the Queen, but they are probably apocryphal. The story of Raleigh's trial is included in John George Phillimore's 1850 book "The History and Principles of Evidence", and his commentary on the story is included in many law school textbooks on evidence in common law countries.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: The author George Garrett's historical fiction novel "Death of the Fox" explores Raleigh's relationships with Elizabeth I and her successor James I.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Many people claim descent from Sir Walter Raleigh, but nearly all have no basis in fact. The only authentic lines of descent are as follows:


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Raleigh's only surviving child, Carew Raleigh, had three surviving children—Walter (d. 1660), Anne (d. 1708) and Philip (d. 1705).


title: Walter Raleigh

text: The elder son, Walter Raleigh, was knighted in June 1660, but died two months later. He was buried at West Horsley. He left three surviving children—Elizabeth, Philippa and Anne. Philippa (who married Oliver Weekes, of Tortingdon, Sussex) and Anne (who married William Knight, of Barrells, Warwickshire) left descendants. It was Philippa Weekes' daughter, Elizabeth Elwes, who seems to have owned the main store of Raleigh memorabilia and was consulted by William Oldys in 1735 when he was writing his "Life of Raleigh".


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Anne Raleigh married Sir Peter Tyrrell, of Castlethorpe, Bucks. Her granddaughter, Harriet, married Francis Mann, of Kidlington, Oxfordshire, and died in 1785, leaving descendants.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Philip Raleigh championed his grandfather's cause, publishing several of his hitherto unpublished papers. He had a family of four sons and three daughters. The youngest son, Carew Raleigh, page of honour to William III, was serving as a captain's servant on when he died of fever in the West Indies in 1697, aged seventeen. The second son, Lieut. Brudenell Raleigh, was also serving in the navy in the West Indies when he died of fever in June 1698, aged 22. The eldest son, Captain Walter Raleigh, Grenadier Guards, was page of honour to Queen Mary, and was killed at the siege of Schellenberg in 1704, aged 31. He was unmarried. After Walter's death, his father was granted a pension by the crown, 'in consideration of his 3 sons being slain in the late and present war'. The third son, Captain-Lieutenant Grenville Raleigh, served in the Duke of Marlborough's army throughout the War of the Spanish Succession and died of fever in 1717, while guarding the prisoners at Chester after the 1715 Jacobite rising. He had married and had two sons and a daughter, Mary. On the death of his daughter in Bath in 1783, it was noted that she was 'the only surviving descendant in the direct line of Sir Walter Raleigh'.


title: Walter Raleigh

text: Of Philip Raleigh's daughters, Anne and Elizabeth both died unmarried. The eldest daughter, Frances, married William Honywood, eldest son of Sir William Honywood, of Evington Place, Elmsted, Kent and died in 1730. Her many descendants include the present Lord Mountbatten and the actor Hugh Grant.


title: Maria Callas

text: Maria Callas (born Sophie Cecilia Kalos; December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano who was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Many critics praised her "bel canto" technique, wide-ranging voice and dramatic interpretations. Her repertoire ranged from classical "opera seria" to the "bel canto" operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini and, further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner. Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as "La Divina" ("the Divine one").


title: Maria Callas

text: Born in Manhattan, New York City, to Greek immigrant parents, she was raised by an overbearing mother who had wanted a son. Maria received her musical education in Greece at age 13 and later established her career in Italy. Forced to deal with the exigencies of 1940s wartime poverty and with near-sightedness that left her nearly blind onstage, she endured struggles and scandal over the course of her career. She notably underwent a mid-career weight loss, which might have contributed to her vocal decline and the premature end of her career.


title: Maria Callas

text: The press exulted in publicizing Callas's temperamental behavior, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi and her love affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Although her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press, her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her "the Bible of opera" and her influence so enduring that, in 2006, "Opera News" wrote of her: "Nearly thirty years after her death, she's still the definition of the diva as artist—and still one of classical music's best-selling vocalists."


title: Maria Callas

text: The name on Callas's New York birth certificate is "Sophie Cecilia Kalos", although she was christened "Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos" (""). She was born at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center), 1249 5th Avenue, Manhattan, on December 2, 1923, to Greek parents, George Kalogeropoulos (c. 1881–1972) and Elmina Evangelia "Litsa" née Demes, originally Dimitriadou (c. 1894–1982). Callas's father had shortened the surname Kalogeropoulos first to "Kalos" and subsequently to "Callas" to make it more manageable.


title: Maria Callas

text: George and Litsa Callas were an ill-matched couple from the beginning. George was easy-going and unambitious, with no interest in the arts, while Litsa was vivacious and socially ambitious and had dreamed of a life in the arts, which her middle-class parents had stifled in her childhood and youth. Litsa's father, Petros Dimitriadis (1852–1916), was in failing health when Litsa introduced George to her family. Petros, distrustful of George, had warned his daughter, "You will never be happy with him. If you marry that man, I will never be able to help you". Litsa had ignored his warning, but soon realized that her father was right. The situation was aggravated by George's philandering and was improved neither by the birth of a daughter, named Yakinthi (later called "Jackie") in 1917, nor the birth of a son, named Vassilis, in 1920. Vassilis's death from meningitis in the summer of 1922 dealt another blow to the marriage.


title: Maria Callas

text: In 1923, after realizing that Litsa was pregnant again, George made the decision to move his family to the United States, a decision which Yakinthi recalled was greeted with Litsa "shouting hysterically" followed by George "slamming doors". The family left for New York in July 1923, moving first into an apartment in the heavily ethnic neighborhood of Astoria, Queens.


title: Maria Callas

text: Litsa was convinced that her third child would be a boy; her disappointment at the birth of another daughter was so great that she refused to even look at her new baby for four days. Maria was christened three years later at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in 1926. When Maria was 4, George Callas opened his own pharmacy, settling the family in Manhattan on 192nd Street in Washington Heights, where Callas grew up. Around the age of three, Maria's musical talent began to manifest itself, and after Litsa discovered that her youngest daughter also had a voice, she began pressing "Mary" to sing. Callas later recalled, "I was made to sing when I was only five, and I hated it." George was unhappy with his wife favoring their elder daughter, as well as the pressure put upon young Mary to sing and perform, while Litsa was increasingly embittered with George and his absences and infidelity, and often violently reviled him in front of their children. The marriage continued to deteriorate and, in 1937, Litsa decided to return to Athens with her two daughters.


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas's relationship with her mother continued to erode during the years in Greece, and in the prime of her career, it became a matter of great public interest, especially after a 1956 cover story in "Time" magazine which focused on this relationship and later, by Litsa's book "My Daughter Maria Callas" (1960). In public, Callas recalls the strained relationship with Litsa on her unhappy childhood spent singing and working at her mother's insistence, saying,


title: Maria Callas

text: My sister was slim and beautiful and friendly, and my mother always preferred her. I was the ugly duckling, fat and clumsy and unpopular. It is a cruel thing to make a child feel ugly and unwanted... I'll never forgive her for taking my childhood away. During all the years I should have been playing and growing up, I was singing or making money. Everything I did for them was mostly good and everything they did to me was mostly bad.


title: Maria Callas

text: In 1957, she told Chicago radio host Norman Ross Jr., "There must be a law against forcing children to perform at an early age. Children should have a wonderful childhood. They should not be given too much responsibility."


title: Maria Callas

text: Biographer says that Litsa's hateful treatment of George in front of their young children led to resentment and dislike on Callas's part. According to both Callas's husband and her close friend Giulietta Simionato, Callas related to them that her mother, who did not work, pressed her to "go out with various men", mainly Italian and German soldiers, to bring home money and food during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. Simionato was convinced that Callas "managed to remain untouched", but never forgave her mother for what she perceived as a kind of prostitution forced on her. Litsa herself, beginning in New York and continuing in Athens, had adopted a questionable lifestyle that included not only pushing her daughters into degrading situations to support her financially, but also entertaining Italian and German soldiers herself during the Axis occupation.


title: Maria Callas

text: In an attempt to patch things up with her mother, Callas took Litsa along on her first visit to Mexico in 1950, but this only reawakened the old frictions and resentments, and after leaving Mexico they never met again. After a series of angry and accusatory letters from Litsa lambasting Callas's father and husband, Callas ceased communication with her mother altogether.


title: Maria Callas

text: A 1955 "Time" story covered Callas' response to her mother's request of $100, "for my daily bread." Callas had replied, "Don't come to us with your troubles. I had to work for my money, and you are young enough to work, too. If you can't make enough money to live on, you can jump out of the window or drown yourself." Callas justified her behavior..."They say my family is very short of money. Before God, I say why should they blame me? I feel no guilt and I feel no gratitude. I like to show kindness, but you mustn't expect thanks, because you won't get any. That's the way life is. If some day I need help, I wouldn't expect anything from anybody. When I'm old, nobody is going to worry about me."


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas received her musical education in Athens. Initially, her mother tried to enroll her at the prestigious Athens Conservatoire, without success. At the audition, her voice, still untrained, failed to impress, while the conservatoire's director refused to accept her without her satisfying the theoretic prerequisites (solfege). In the summer of 1937, her mother visited Maria Trivella at the younger Greek National Conservatoire, asking her to take Mary, as she was then called, as a student for a modest fee. In 1957, Trivella recalled her impression of "Mary, a very plump young girl, wearing big glasses for her myopia":


title: Maria Callas

text: The tone of the voice was warm, lyrical, intense; it swirled and flared like a flame and filled the air with melodious reverberations like a carillon. It was by any standards an amazing phenomenon, or rather it was a great talent that needed control, technical training and strict discipline in order to shine with all its brilliance.


title: Maria Callas

text: Trivella agreed to tutor Callas, completely waiving her tuition fees, but no sooner had Callas started her formal lessons and vocal exercises than Trivella began to feel that Callas was not a contralto, as she had been told, but a dramatic soprano. Subsequently, they began working on raising the tessitura of her voice and to lighten its timbre. Trivella recalled Callas as:


title: Maria Callas

text: A model student. Fanatical, uncompromising, dedicated to her studies heart and soul. Her progress was phenomenal. She studied five or six hours a day. ...Within six months, she was singing the most difficult arias in the international opera repertoire with the utmost musicality.


title: Maria Callas

text: On April 11, 1938, in her public debut, Callas ended the recital of Trivella's class at the Parnassos music hall with a duet from "Tosca". Callas recalled that Trivella:


title: Maria Callas

text: had a French method, which was placing the voice in the nose, rather nasal... and I had the problem of not having low chest tones, which is essential in "bel canto"... And that's where I learned my chest tones.


title: Maria Callas

text: However, when interviewed by on the French program "L'invitée du dimanche", Callas attributed the development of her chest voice not to Trivella, but to her next teacher, the Spanish coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo.


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas studied with Trivella for two years before her mother secured another audition at the Athens Conservatoire with de Hidalgo. Callas auditioned with "Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster" from Weber's "Oberon". De Hidalgo recalled hearing "tempestuous, extravagant cascades of sounds, as yet uncontrolled but full of drama and emotion". She agreed to take her as a pupil immediately, but Callas's mother asked de Hidalgo to wait for a year, as Callas would be graduating from the National Conservatoire and could begin working. On April 2, 1939, Callas undertook the part of Santuzza in a student production of Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana" at the Greek National Opera at the Olympia Theatre, and in the fall of the same year she enrolled at the Athens Conservatoire in Elvira de Hidalgo's class.


title: Maria Callas

text: De Hildalgo had the real great training, maybe even the last real training of the "real" "bel canto". As a young girl—thirteen years old—I was immediately thrown into her arms, meaning that I learned the secrets, the ways of this "bel canto", which of course as you well know, is not just beautiful singing. It is a very hard training; it is a sort of a strait-jacket that you're supposed to put on, whether you like it or not. You have to learn to read, to write, to form your sentences, how far you can go, fall, hurt yourself, put yourself back on your feet continuously. De Hidalgo had one method, which was the real "bel canto" way, where no matter how heavy a voice, it should always be kept light, it should always be worked on in a flexible way, never to weigh it down. It is a method of keeping the voice light and flexible and pushing the instrument into a certain zone where it might not be too large in sound, but penetrating. And teaching the scales, trills, all the "bel canto" embellishments, which is a whole vast language of its own.


title: Maria Callas

text: De Hidalgo later recalled Callas as "a phenomenon... She would listen to all my students, sopranos, mezzos, tenors... She could do it all." Callas herself said that she would go to "the "conservatoire" at 10 in the morning and leave with the last pupil ... devouring music" for 10 hours a day. When asked by her teacher why she did this, her answer was that even "with the least talented pupil, "he" can teach you something that you, the most talented, might not be able to do."


title: Maria Callas

text: After several appearances as a student, Callas began appearing in secondary roles at the Greek National Opera. De Hidalgo was instrumental in securing roles for her, allowing Callas to earn a small salary, which helped her and her family get through the difficult war years.


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas made her professional debut in February 1941, in the small role of Beatrice in Franz von Suppé's "Boccaccio". Soprano Galatea Amaxopoulou, who sang in the chorus, later recalled, "Even in rehearsal, Maria's fantastic performing ability had been obvious, and from then on, the others started trying ways of preventing her from appearing." Fellow singer Maria Alkeou similarly recalled that the established sopranos Nafsika Galanou and Anna (Zozó) Remmoundou "used to stand in the wings while [Callas] was singing and make remarks about her, muttering, laughing, and point their fingers at her".


title: Maria Callas

text: Despite these hostilities, Callas managed to continue and made her debut in a leading role in August 1942 as Tosca, going on to sing the role of Marta in Eugen d'Albert's "Tiefland" at the Olympia Theatre. Callas's performance as Marta received glowing reviews. Critic Spanoudi declared Callas "an extremely dynamic artist possessing the rarest dramatic and musical gifts", and Vangelis Mangliveras evaluated Callas's performance for the weekly "To Radiophonon":


title: Maria Callas

text: The singer who took the part of Marta, that new star in the Greek firmament, with a matchless depth of feeling, gave a theatrical interpretation well up to the standard of a tragic actress. About her exceptional voice with its astonishing natural fluency, I do not wish to add anything to the words of Alexandra Lalaouni: 'Kalogeropoulou is one of those God-given talents that one can only marvel at.'


title: Maria Callas

text: Following these performances, even Callas's detractors began to refer to her as "The God-Given". Some time later, watching Callas rehearse Beethoven's "Fidelio", erstwhile rival soprano Anna Remoundou asked a colleague, "Could it be that there "is" something divine and we haven't realized it?" Following "Tiefland", Callas sang the role of Santuzza in "Cavalleria rusticana" again and followed it with "" (Manolis Kalomiris) at the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus theatre at the foot of the Acropolis.


title: Maria Callas

text: During August and September 1944, Callas performed the role of Leonore in a Greek language production of "Fidelio", again at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. German critic Friedrich Herzog, who witnessed the performances, declared Leonore Callas's "greatest triumph":


title: Maria Callas

text: When Maria Kaloyeropoulou's Leonore let her soprano soar out radiantly in the untrammelled jubilation of the duet, she rose to the most sublime heights. ... Here she gave bud, blossom and fruit to that harmony of sound that also ennobled the art of the prima donna.


title: Maria Callas

text: After the liberation of Greece, de Hidalgo advised Callas to establish herself in Italy. Callas proceeded to give a series of concerts around Greece, and then, against her teacher's advice, she returned to America to see her father and to further pursue her career. When she left Greece on September 14, 1945, two months short of her 22nd birthday, Callas had given 56 performances in seven operas and had appeared in around 20 recitals. Callas considered her Greek career as the foundation of her musical and dramatic upbringing, saying, "When I got to the big career, there were no surprises for me."


title: Maria Callas

text: After returning to the United States and reuniting with her father in September 1945, Callas made the round of auditions. In December of that year, she auditioned for Edward Johnson, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, and was favorably received: "Exceptional voice—ought to be heard very soon on stage".


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas maintained that the Metropolitan Opera offered her "Madama Butterfly" and "Fidelio", to be performed in Philadelphia and sung in English, both of which she declined, feeling she was too fat for "Butterfly" and did not like the idea of opera in English. Although no written evidence of this offer exists in the Met's records, in a 1958 interview with the "New York Post", Johnson confirmed that a contract was offered: "... but she didn't like it—because of the contract, not because of the roles. She was right in turning it down—it was frankly a beginner's contract."


title: Maria Callas

text: In 1946, Callas was engaged to re-open the opera house in Chicago as "Turandot", but the company folded before opening. Basso Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, who also was to star in this opera, was aware that Tullio Serafin was looking for a dramatic soprano to cast as "La Gioconda" at the Arena di Verona. He later recalled the young Callas as being "amazing—so strong physically and spiritually; so certain of her future. I knew in a big outdoor theatre like Verona's, this girl, with her courage and huge voice, would make a tremendous impact." Subsequently he recommended Callas to retired tenor and impresario Giovanni Zenatello. During her audition, Zenatello became so excited that he jumped up and joined Callas in the act 4 duet.


title: Maria Callas

text: It was in this role that Callas made her Italian debut. Upon her arrival in Verona, Callas met , an older, wealthy industrialist, who began courting her. They married in 1949, and he assumed control of her career until 1959, when the marriage dissolved. It was Meneghini's love and support that gave Callas the time needed to establish herself in Italy, and throughout the prime of her career, she went by the name of Maria Meneghini Callas.


title: Maria Callas

text: After "La Gioconda", Callas had no further offers, and when Serafin, looking for someone to sing Isolde, called on her, she told him that she already knew the score, even though she had looked at only the first act out of curiosity while at the conservatory. She sight-read the opera's second act for Serafin, who praised her for knowing the role so well, whereupon she admitted to having bluffed and having sight-read the music. Even more impressed, Serafin immediately cast her in the role. Serafin thereafter served as Callas's mentor and supporter.


title: Maria Callas

text: According to Lord Harewood, "Very few Italian conductors have had a more distinguished career than Tullio Serafin, and perhaps none, apart from Toscanini, more influence". In 1968, Callas recalled that working with Serafin was the "really lucky" opportunity of her career, because "he taught me that there must be an expression; that there must be a justification. He taught me the depth of music, the justification of music. That's where I really really drank all I could from this man".


title: Maria Callas

text: The great turning point in Callas's career occurred in Venice in 1949. She was engaged to sing the role of Brünnhilde in "Die Walküre" at the Teatro la Fenice, when Margherita Carosio, who was engaged to sing Elvira in "I puritani" in the same theatre, fell ill. Unable to find a replacement for Carosio, Serafin told Callas that she would be singing Elvira in six days; when Callas protested that she not only did not know the role, but also had three more Brünnhildes to sing, he told her "I guarantee that you can". Michael Scott's words, "the notion of any one singer embracing music as divergent in its vocal demands as Wagner's Brünnhilde and Bellini's Elvira in the same career would have been cause enough for surprise; but to attempt to essay them both in the same season seemed like "folie de grandeur"".


title: Maria Callas

text: Before the performance actually took place, one incredulous critic snorted, "We hear that Serafin has agreed to conduct "I puritani" with a dramatic soprano ... When can we expect a new edition of "La traviata" with [male baritone] Gino Bechi's Violetta?" After the performance, one critic wrote, "Even the most sceptical had to acknowledge the miracle that Maria Callas accomplished... the flexibility of her limpid, beautifully poised voice, and her splendid high notes. Her interpretation also has a humanity, warmth and expressiveness that one would search for in vain in the fragile, pellucid coldness of other Elviras." Franco Zeffirelli recalled, "What she did in Venice was really incredible. You need to be familiar with opera to realize the size of her achievement. It was as if someone asked Birgit Nilsson, who is famous for her great Wagnerian voice, to substitute overnight for Beverly Sills, who is one of the great coloratura sopranos of our time."


title: Maria Callas

text: Scott asserts that "Of all the many roles Callas undertook, it is doubtful if any had a more far-reaching effect." This initial foray into the bel canto repertoire changed the course of Callas's career and set her on a path leading to "Lucia di Lammermoor", "La traviata", "Armida", "La sonnambula", "Il pirata", "Il turco in Italia", "Medea", and "Anna Bolena", and reawakened interest in the long-neglected operas of Cherubini, Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini.


title: Maria Callas

text: She opened a new door for us, for all the singers in the world, a door that had been closed. Behind it was sleeping not only great music but great idea of interpretation. She has given us the chance, those who follow her, to do things that were hardly possible before her. That I am compared with Callas is something I never dared to dream. It is not right. I am much smaller than Callas.


title: Maria Callas

text: As with "I puritani", Callas learned and performed Cherubini's "Medea", Giordano's "Andrea Chénier" and Rossini's "Armida " on a few days' notice. Throughout her career, Callas displayed her vocal versatility in recitals that juxtaposed dramatic soprano arias alongside coloratura pieces, including in a 1952 RAI recital in which she opened with "Lady Macbeth's letter scene", followed by the "Mad Scene" from "Lucia di Lammermoor", then Abigaille's treacherous recitative and aria from "Nabucco", finishing with the "Bell Song" from "Lakmé" capped by a ringing high E "in alt" (E6).


title: Maria Callas

text: Although by 1951, Callas had sung at all the major theatres in Italy, she had not yet made her official debut at Italy's most prestigious opera house, Teatro alla Scala in Milan. According to composer Gian Carlo Menotti, Callas had substituted for Renata Tebaldi in the role of "Aida" in 1950, and La Scala's general manager, Antonio Ghiringhelli, had taken an immediate dislike to Callas.


title: Maria Callas

text: Menotti recalls that Ghiringhelli had promised him any singer he wanted for the premiere of "The Consul", but when he suggested Callas, Ghiringhelli said that he would never have Callas at La Scala except as a guest artist. However, as Callas's fame grew, and especially after her great success in "I vespri siciliani" in Florence, Ghiringhelli had to relent: Callas made her official debut at La Scala in Verdi's "I vespri siciliani" on opening night in December 1951, and this theatre became her artistic home throughout the 1950s. La Scala mounted many new productions specially for Callas by directors such as Herbert von Karajan, Margherita Wallmann, Franco Zeffirelli and, most importantly, Luchino Visconti. Visconti stated later that he began directing opera only because of Callas, and he directed her in lavish new productions of "La vestale", "La traviata", "La sonnambula", "Anna Bolena" and "Iphigénie en Tauride". Callas was notably instrumental in arranging Franco Corelli's debut at La Scala in 1954, where he sang Licinio in Spontini's "La vestale" opposite Callas's Julia. The two had sung together for the first time the year previously in Rome in a production of "Norma". Anthony Tommasini wrote that Corelli had "earned great respect from the fearsomely demanding Callas, who, in Mr Corelli, finally had someone with whom she could act." The two collaborated several more times at La Scala, singing opposite each other in productions of "Fedora" (1956), "Il pirata" (1958) and "Poliuto" (1960). Their partnership continued throughout the rest of Callas's career.


title: Maria Callas

text: The night of the day she married Meneghini in Verona, she sailed for Argentina to sing at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Callas made her South American debut in Buenos Aires on May 20, 1949, during the European summer opera recess. "Aida", "Turandot" and "Norma" roles were directed by Serafin, supported by Mario Del Monaco, Fedora Barbieri and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni. These were her only appearances on this world-renowned stage. Her debut in the United States was five years later in Chicago in 1954, and "with the Callas "Norma", Lyric Opera of Chicago was born."


title: Maria Callas

text: Her Metropolitan Opera debut, opening the Met's seventy-second season on October 29, 1956, was again with "Norma", but was preceded by an unflattering cover story in "Time" magazine, which rehashed all of the Callas clichés, including her temper, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi, and especially her difficult relationship with her mother. As she had done with Lyric Opera of Chicago, on November 21, 1957, Callas gave a concert to inaugurate what then was billed as the Dallas Civic Opera, and helped establish that company with her friends from Chicago, Lawrence Kelly and Nicola Rescigno. She further consolidated this company's standing when, in 1958, she gave "a towering performance as Violetta in "La traviata", and that same year, in her only American performances of "Medea", gave an interpretation of the title role worthy of Euripides."


title: Maria Callas

text: In 1958, a feud with Rudolf Bing led to Callas's Metropolitan Opera contract being cancelled. Impresario Allen Oxenburg realised that this situation provided him with an opportunity for his own company, the American Opera Society, and he accordingly approached her with a contract to perform Imogene in "Il pirata". She accepted and sang the role in a January 1959 performance that according to opera critic Allan Kozinn "quickly became legendary in operatic circles". Bing and Callas later reconciled their differences, and she returned to the Met in 1965 to sing the title role in two performances as Tosca opposite Franco Corelli as Cavaradossi for one performance (March 19, 1965) and Richard Tucker (March 25, 1965) with Tito Gobbi as Scarpia for her final performances at the Met.


title: Maria Callas

text: In 1952, she made her London debut at the Royal Opera House in "Norma" with veteran mezzo-soprano Ebe Stignani as Adalgisa, a performance which survives on record and also features the young Joan Sutherland in the small role of Clotilde. Callas and the London public had what she herself called "a love affair", and she returned to the Royal Opera House in 1953, 1957, 1958, 1959, and 1964 to 1965. It was at the Royal Opera House where, on July 5, 1965, Callas ended her stage career in the role of "Tosca", in a production designed and mounted for her by Franco Zeffirelli and featuring her friend and colleague Tito Gobbi.


title: Maria Callas

text: In the early years of her career, Callas was a heavy woman; in her own words, "Heavy—one can say—yes I was; but I'm also a tall woman, 5' " (), and I used to weigh no more than ." Tito Gobbi relates that during a lunch break while recording "Lucia" in Florence, Serafin commented to Callas that she was eating too much and allowing her weight to become a problem. When she protested that she wasn't "so" heavy, Gobbi suggested she should "put the matter to test" by stepping on the weighing machine outside the restaurant. The result was "somewhat dismaying, and she became rather silent." In 1968, Callas told Edward Downes that during her initial performances in Cherubini's "Medea" in May 1953, she realized that she needed a leaner face and figure to do dramatic justice to this as well as the other roles she was undertaking. She adds,


title: Maria Callas

text: I was getting so heavy that even my vocalizing was getting heavy. I was tiring myself, I was perspiring too much, and I was really working too hard. And I wasn't really well, as in health; I couldn't move freely. And then I was tired of playing a game, for instance playing this beautiful young woman, and I was heavy and uncomfortable to move around. In any case, it was uncomfortable and I didn't like it. So I felt now if I'm going to do things right—I've studied all my life to put things right musically, so why don't I diet and put myself into a certain condition where I'm presentable.


title: Maria Callas

text: During 1953 and early 1954, she lost almost , turning herself into what Rescigno called "possibly the most beautiful lady on the stage". Sir Rudolf Bing, who remembered Callas as being "monstrously fat" in 1951, stated that after the weight loss, Callas was an "astonishing, svelte, striking woman" who "showed none of the signs one usually finds in a fat woman who has lost weight: she looked as though she had been born to that slender and graceful figure, and had always moved with that elegance." Various rumors spread regarding her weight loss method; one had her swallowing a tapeworm, while Rome's Panatella Mills pasta company claimed she lost weight by eating their "physiologic pasta", prompting Callas to file a lawsuit. Callas stated that she lost the weight by eating a sensible low-calorie diet of mainly salads and chicken. Callas never regained the weight she lost and kept her slim figure until her death.


title: Maria Callas

text: Some believe that the loss of body mass made it more difficult for her to support her voice, triggering the vocal strain that became apparent later in the decade, while others believed the weight loss effected a newfound softness and femininity in her voice, as well as a greater confidence as a person and performer. Tito Gobbi said,


title: Maria Callas

text: Now she was not only supremely gifted both musically and dramatically—she was a beauty too. And her awareness of this invested with fresh magic every role she undertook. What it eventually did to her vocal and nervous stamina I am not prepared to say. I only assert that she blossomed into an artist unique in her generation and outstanding in the whole range of vocal history.


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas's voice was and remains controversial; it bothered and disturbed as many as it thrilled and inspired. Walter Legge stated that Callas possessed that most essential ingredient for a great singer: an instantly recognizable voice.


title: Maria Callas

text: During "The Callas Debate", Italian critic Rodolfo Celletti stated, "The timbre of Callas's voice, considered purely as sound, was essentially ugly: it was a thick sound, which gave the impression of dryness, of aridity. It lacked those elements which, in a singer's jargon, are described as velvet and varnish... yet I really believe that part of her appeal was precisely due to this fact. Why? Because for all its natural lack of varnish, velvet and richness, this voice could acquire such distinctive colours and timbres as to be unforgettable." However, in his review of Callas's 1951 live recording of "I vespri siciliani", Ira Siff writes, "Accepted wisdom tells us that Callas possessed, even early on, a flawed voice, unattractive by conventional standards—an instrument that signaled from the beginning vocal problems to come. Yet listen to her entrance in this performance and one encounters a rich, spinning sound, ravishing by any standard, capable of delicate dynamic nuance. High notes are free of wobble, chest tones unforced, and the middle register displays none of the "bottled" quality that became more and more pronounced as Callas matured."


title: Maria Callas

text: Nicola Rossi-Lemeni relates that Callas's mentor Serafin used to refer to her as "Una grande vociaccia"; he continues, ""Vociaccia" is a little bit pejorative—it means an ugly voice—but "grande" means a big voice, a great voice. A great ugly voice, in a way." Callas herself did not like the sound of her own voice; in one of her last interviews, answering whether or not she was able to listen to her own voice, she replies,


title: Maria Callas

text: Yes, but I don't like it. I have to do it, but I don't like it at all because I don't like the kind of voice I have. I really hate listening to myself! The first time I listened to a recording of my singing was when we were recording "San Giovanni Battista" by Stradella in a church in Perugia in 1949. They made me listen to the tape and I cried my eyes out. I wanted to stop everything, to give up singing... Also now even though I don't like my voice, I've become able to accept it and to be detached and objective about it so I can say, "Oh, that was really well sung," or "It was nearly perfect."


title: Maria Callas

text: It is very difficult to speak of the voice of Callas. Her voice was a very special instrument. Something happens sometimes with string instruments—violin, viola, cello—where the first moment you listen to the sound of this instrument, the first feeling is a bit strange sometimes. But after just a few minutes, when you get used to, when you become friends with this kind of sound, then the sound becomes a magical quality. This was Callas.


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas's voice has been difficult to place in the modern vocal classification or Fach system, especially since in her prime, her repertoire contained the heaviest dramatic soprano roles as well as roles usually undertaken by the highest, lightest and most agile coloratura sopranos. Regarding this versatility, Serafin said, "This woman can sing anything written for the female voice". Michael Scott argues that Callas's voice was a natural high soprano, and going by evidence of Callas's early recordings, Rosa Ponselle likewise felt that "At that stage of its development, her voice was a pure but sizable dramatic coloratura—that is to say, a sizable coloratura voice with dramatic capabilities, not the other way around." On the other hand, music critic John Ardoin has argued that Callas was the reincarnation of the 19th-century "soprano sfogato" or "unlimited soprano", a throwback to Maria Malibran and Giuditta Pasta, for whom many of the famous bel canto operas were written. He avers that like Pasta and Malibran, Callas was a natural mezzo-soprano whose range was extended through training and willpower, resulting in a voice which "lacked the homogeneous color and evenness of scale once so prized in singing. There were unruly sections of their voices never fully under control. Many who heard Pasta, for example, remarked that her uppermost notes seemed produced by ventriloquism, a charge which would later be made against Callas". Ardoin points to the writings of Henry Chorley about Pasta which bear an uncanny resemblance to descriptions of Callas:


title: Maria Callas

text: There was a portion of the scale which differed from the rest in quality and remained to the last 'under a veil.' ...out of these uncouth materials she had to compose her instrument and then to give it flexibility. Her studies to acquire execution must have been tremendous; but the volubility and brilliancy, when acquired, gained a character of their own... There were a breadth, an expressiveness in her roulades, an evenness and solidity in her shake, which imparted to every passage a significance totally beyond the reach of lighter and more spontaneous singers... The best of her audience were held in thrall, without being able to analyze what made up the spell, what produced the effect—as soon as she opened her lips.


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas herself appears to have been in agreement not only with Ardoin's assertions that she started as a natural mezzo-soprano, but also saw the similarities between herself and Pasta and Malibran. In 1957, she described her early voice as: "The timbre was dark, almost black—when I think of it, I think of thick molasses", and in 1968 she added, "They say I was not a true soprano, I was rather toward a mezzo". Regarding her ability to sing the heaviest as well as the lightest roles, she told James Fleetwood,


title: Maria Callas

text: It's study; it's Nature. I'm doing nothing special, you know. Even "Lucia", "Anna Bolena", "Puritani", all these operas were created for one type of soprano, the type that sang "Norma", "Fidelio", which was Malibran of course. And a funny coincidence last year, I was singing "Anna Bolena" and "Sonnambula", same months and the same distance of time as Giuditta Pasta had sung in the nineteenth century... So I'm really not doing anything extraordinary. You wouldn't ask a pianist to be able to play everything; he to. This is Nature and also because I had a wonderful teacher, the old kind of teaching methods... I was a very heavy voice, that is my nature, a dark voice shall we call it, and I was always kept on the light side. She always trained me to keep my voice limber.


title: Maria Callas

text: Regarding the sheer size of Callas's instrument, Rodolfo Celletti says, "Her voice was penetrating. The volume as such was average: neither small nor powerful. But the penetration, allied to this incisive quality (which bordered on the ugly because it frequently contained an element of harshness) ensured that her voice could be clearly heard anywhere in the auditorium." Celletti wrote that Callas had "a voluminous, penetrating, and dark voice" ("una voce voluminosa, squillante e di timbro scuro"). After her first performance of Medea in 1953, the critic for "Musical Courier" wrote that "she displayed a vocal generosity that was scarcely believable for its amplitude and resilience." In a 1982 "Opera News" interview with Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge, Bonynge stated, "But before she slimmed down, I mean this was such a colossal voice. It just poured out of her, the way Flagstad's did... Callas had a huge voice. When she and Stignani sang Norma, at the bottom of the range you could barely tell who was who ... Oh it was colossal. And she took the big sound right up to the top." In his book, Michael Scott makes the distinction that whereas Callas's pre-1954 voice was a "dramatic soprano with an exceptional top", after the weight loss, it became, as one Chicago critic described the voice in "Lucia", a "huge soprano leggiero".


title: Maria Callas

text: In performance, Callas's vocal range was just short of three octaves, from F-sharp (F3) below middle C (C4) heard in "Arrigo! Ah parli a un core" from "I vespri siciliani" to E-natural (E6) above high C (C6), heard in the aria "Mercè, dilette amiche" in the final act of the same opera, as well as in Rossini's "Armida" and "Lakmé"s Bell Song. Whether or not Callas ever sang a high F-natural in performance has been open to debate. After her June 11, 1951, concert in Florence, Rock Ferris of "Musical Courier" said, "Her high E's and F's are taken full voice." Although no definite recording of Callas singing high Fs has surfaced, the presumed E-natural at the end of Rossini's "Armida"—a poor-quality bootleg recording of uncertain pitch—has been referred to as a high F by Italian musicologists and critics Eugenio Gara and Rodolfo Celletti. Callas expert Dr. Robert Seletsky, however, stated that since the finale of "Armida" is in the key of E, the final note could not have been an F, as it would have been dissonant. Author Eve Ruggieri has referred to the penultimate note in "Mercè, dilette amiche" from the 1951 Florence performances of "I vespri siciliani" as a high F; however, this claim is refuted by John Ardoin's review of the live recording of the performance as well as by the review of the recording in "Opera News", both of which refer to the note as a high E-natural.


title: Maria Callas

text: In a 1969 French television interview with on the program "L'invitée du dimanche", speaks of Callas's voice going to high F (he also talked about her lower register extending to C3), but within the same program, Callas's teacher, Elvira de Hidalgo, speaks of the voice soaring to a high E-natural but does not mention a high F. Callas remained silent on the subject, neither confirming nor denying either claim.


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas's voice was noted for its three distinct registers: Her low or chest register was extremely dark and powerful, and she used this part of her voice for dramatic effect, often going into this register much higher on the scale than most sopranos. Her middle register had a peculiar and highly personal sound—"part oboe, part clarinet", as Claudia Cassidy described it—and was noted for its veiled or "bottled" sound, as if she were singing into a jug. Walter Legge, husband of diva Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, attributed this sound to the "extraordinary formation of her upper palate, shaped like a Gothic arch, not the Romanesque arch of the normal mouth".


title: Maria Callas

text: The upper register was ample and bright, with an impressive extension above high C, which—in contrast to the light flute-like sound of the typical coloratura, "she would attack these notes with more vehemence and power—quite differently therefore, from the very delicate, cautious, 'white' approach of the light sopranos." Legge adds, "Even in the most difficult fioriture there were no musical or technical difficulties in this part of the voice which she could not execute with astonishing, unostentatious ease. Her chromatic runs, particularly downwards, were beautifully smooth and staccatos almost unfailingly accurate, even in the trickiest intervals. There is hardly a bar in the whole range of nineteenth-century music for high soprano that seriously tested her powers." And as she demonstrated in the finale of "La sonnambula" on the commercial EMI set and the live recording from Cologne, she was able to execute a diminuendo on the stratospheric high E-flat, which Scott describes as "a feat unrivaled in the history of the gramophone."


title: Maria Callas

text: Regarding Callas's soft singing, Celletti says, "In these soft passages, Callas seemed to use another voice altogether, because it acquired a great sweetness. Whether in her florid singing or in her "canto spianato", that is, in long held notes without ornamentation, her "mezza voce" could achieve such moving sweetness that the sound seemed to come from on high ... I don't know, it seemed to come from the skylight of La Scala."


title: Maria Callas

text: This combination of size, weight, range and agility was a source of amazement to Callas's own contemporaries. One of the choristers present at her La Scala debut in "I vespri siciliani" recalled, "My God! She came on stage sounding like our deepest contralto, Cloe Elmo. And before the evening was over, she took a high E-flat. And it was twice as strong as Toti Dal Monte's!" In the same vein, mezzo-soprano Giulietta Simionato said: "The first time we sang together was in Mexico in 1950, where she sang the top E-flat in the second-act finale of "Aida". I can still remember the effect of that note in the opera house—it was like a star!" For Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi, "the most fantastic thing was the possibility for her to sing the soprano coloratura with this voice! This was something really special. absolutely!"


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas's vocal registers, however, were not seamlessly joined; Walter Legge writes, "Unfortunately, it was only in quick music, particularly descending scales, that she completely mastered the art of joining the three almost incompatible voices into one unified whole, but until about 1960, she disguised those audible gear changes with cunning skill." Rodolfo Celletti states,


title: Maria Callas

text: In certain areas of her range her voice also possessed a guttural quality. This would occur in the most delicate and troublesome areas of a soprano's voice—for instance where the lower and middle registers merge, between G and A. I would go so far as to say that here her voice had such resonances as to make one think at times of a ventriloquist ... or else the voice could sound as though it were resonating in a rubber tube. There was another troublesome spot ... between the middle and upper registers. Here, too, around the treble F and G, there was often something in the sound itself which was not quite right, as though the voice were not functioning properly.


title: Maria Callas

text: As to whether these troublesome spots were due to the nature of the voice itself or to technical deficiencies, Celletti says: "Even if, when passing from one register to another, Callas produced an unpleasant sound, the technique she used for these transitions was perfect." Musicologist and critic adds, "Callas's 'faults' were in the voice and not in the singer; they are so to speak, faults of departure but not of arrival. This is precisely Celletti's distinction between the natural quality of the voice and the technique." In 2005, Ewa Podleś said of Callas, "Maybe she had three voices, maybe she had three ranges, I don't know—I am a professional singer. Nothing disturbed me, nothing! I bought everything that she offered me. Why? Because all of her voices, her registers, she used how they should be used—just to tell us something!"


title: Maria Callas

text: Eugenio Gara states, "Much has been said about her voice, and no doubt the discussion will continue. Certainly no one could in honesty deny the harsh or "squashed" sounds, nor the wobble on the very high notes. These and others were precisely the accusations made at the time against Pasta and Malibran, two geniuses of song (as they were then called), sublime, yet imperfect. Both were brought to trial in their day. ... Yet few singers have made history in the annals of opera as these two did."


title: Maria Callas

text: Though adored by many opera enthusiasts, Callas was a controversial artist. While Callas was the great singer often dismissed simply as an actress she considered herself foremost a musician, that is, the first instrument of the orchestra." Grace Bumbry has stated, "If I followed the musical score when she was singing, I would see every tempo marking, every dynamic marking, everything being adhered to, and at the same time, it was not antiseptic; it was something that was very beautiful and moving." Victor de Sabata confided to Walter Legge , "If the public could understand, as we do, how deeply and utterly musical Callas is, they would be stunned", and Serafin assessed Callas's musicality as "extraordinary, almost frightening." Callas possessed an innate architectural sense of line-proportion and an uncanny feel for timing and for what one of her colleagues described as "a sense of the rhythm within the rhythm".


title: Maria Callas

text: Regarding Callas's technical prowess, Celletti says, "We must not forget that she could tackle the whole gamut of ornamentation: staccato, trills, half-trills, gruppetti, scales, etc." D'Amico adds, "The essential virtue of Callas's technique consists of supreme mastery of an extraordinarily rich range of tone colour (that is, the fusion of dynamic range and timbre). And such mastery means total freedom of choice in its use: not being a slave to one's abilities, but rather, being able to use them at will as a means to an end." While reviewing the many recorded versions of "perhaps Verdi's ultimate challenge", the aria "D'amor sull'ali rosee" from "Il trovatore", Richard Dyer writes,


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas articulates all of the trills, and she binds them into the line more expressively than anyone else; they are not an ornament but a form of intensification. Part of the wonder in this performance is the chiaroscuro through her tone—the other side of not singing full-out all the way through. One of the vocal devices that create that chiaroscuro is a varying rate of vibrato; another is her portamento, the way she connects the voice from note to note, phrase to phrase, lifting and gliding. This is never a sloppy swoop, because its intention is as musically precise as it is in great string playing. In this aria, Callas uses more portamento, and in greater variety, than any other singer ... Callas is not creating "effects", as even her greatest rivals do. She sees the aria as a whole, "as if in an aerial view", as Sviatoslav Richter's teacher observed of his most famous pupil; simultaneously, she is on earth, standing in the courtyard of the palace of Aliaferia, floating her voice to the tower where her lover lies imprisoned.


title: Maria Callas

text: In addition to her musical skills, Callas had a particular gift for language and the use of language in music. In recitatives, she always knew which word to emphasize and which syllable in that word to bring out. Michael Scott notes, "If we listen attentively, we note how her perfect legato enables her to suggest by musical means even the exclamation marks and commas of the text." Technically, not only did she have the capacity to perform the most difficult florid music effortlessly, but also she had the ability to use each ornament as an expressive device rather than for mere fireworks. Soprano Martina Arroyo states, "What interested me most was how she gave the runs and the cadenzas "words". That always floored me. I always felt I heard her saying something—it was never just singing notes. That alone is an art." Walter Legge states that,


title: Maria Callas

text: Most admirable of all her qualities, however, were her taste, elegance and deeply musical use of ornamentation in all its forms and complications, the weighting and length of every appoggiatura, the smooth incorporation of the turn in melodic lines, the accuracy and pacing of her trills, the seemingly inevitable timing of her portamentos, varying their curve with enchanting grace and meaning. There were innumerable exquisite felicities—minuscule portamentos from one note to its nearest neighbor, or over widespread intervals—and changes of color that were pure magic. In these aspects of bel canto she was supreme mistress of that art.


title: Maria Callas

text: Regarding Callas's acting ability, vocal coach and music critic Ira Siff remarked, "When I saw the final two "Tosca"s she did in the old [Met], I felt like I was watching the actual story on which the opera had later been based." Callas was not, however, a realistic or verismo style actress: her physical acting was merely "subsidiary to the heavy "Kunst" of developing the psychology of the roles under the supervision of the music, of "singing" the acting... Suffering, delight, humility, hubris, despair, rhapsody—all this was musically appointed, through her use of the voice flying the text upon the notes." Seconding this opinion, verismo specialist soprano Augusta Oltrabella said, "Despite what everyone says, [Callas] was an actress in the expression of the music, and not vice versa."


title: Maria Callas

text: In fact the essence of her art was refinement. The term seems odd for a performer whose imagination and means of expression were so prodigious. She was eminently capable of the grand gesture; still, judging strictly from the evidence of her recordings, we know (and her few existing film clips confirm) that her power flowed not from excess but from unbroken concentration, unfaltering truth in the moment. It flowed also from irreproachable musicianship. People say that Callas would not hesitate to distort a vocal line for dramatic effect. In the throes of operatic passion plenty of singers snarl, growl, whine, and shriek. Callas was not one of them. She found all she needed in the notes.


title: Maria Callas

text: Ewa Podleś likewise stated that "It's enough to hear her, I'm positive! Because she could say everything only with her voice! I can imagine everything, I can see everything in front of my eye." Opera director Sandro Sequi, who witnessed many Callas performances close-up, states, "For me, she was extremely stylized and classic, yet at the same time, human—but humanity on a higher plane of existence, almost sublime. Realism was foreign to her, and that is why she was the greatest of opera singers. After all, opera is the least realistic of theater forms... She was wasted in verismo roles, even "Tosca", no matter how brilliantly she could act such roles." Scott adds, "Early nineteenth-century opera... is not merely the antithesis of reality, it also requires highly stylized acting. Callas had the perfect face for it. Her big features matched its grandiloquence and spoke volumes from a distance."


title: Maria Callas

text: In regard to Callas's physical acting style, Nicola Rescigno states, "Maria had a way of even transforming her body for the exigencies of a role, which is a great triumph. In "La traviata", everything would slope down; everything indicated sickness, fatigue, softness. Her arms would move as if they had no bones, like the great ballerinas. In "Medea", everything was angular. She'd never make a soft gesture; even the walk she used was like a tiger's walk." Sandro Sequi recalls, "She was never in a hurry. Everything was very paced, proportioned, classical, precise... She was extremely powerful but extremely stylized. Her gestures were not many... I don't think she did more than 20 gestures in a performance. But she was capable of standing 10 minutes without moving a hand or finger, compelling everyone to look at her." Edward Downes recalled Callas watching and observing her colleagues with such intensity and concentration as to make it seem that the drama was all unfolding in her head. Sir Rudolf Bing similarly recalled that in "Il trovatore" in Chicago, "it was Callas's quiet listening, rather than Björling's singing that made the dramatic impact... He didn't know what he was singing, but she knew."


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas herself stated that, in opera, acting must be based on the music, quoting Serafin's advice to her:


title: Maria Callas

text: When one wants to find a gesture, when you want to find how to act onstage, all you have to do is to the music. The composer has already seen to that. If you take the trouble to really listen with your Soul and with your Ears—and I say 'Soul' and 'Ears' because the Mind must work, but not much also—you will find every gesture there.


title: Maria Callas

text: Callas's most distinguishing quality was her ability to breathe life into the characters she portrayed, or in the words of Matthew Gurewitsch, "Most mysterious among her many gifts, Callas had the genius to translate the minute particulars of a life into tone of voice." Italian critic Eugenio Gara adds:


title: Maria Callas

text: Her secret is in her ability to transfer to the musical plane the suffering of the character she plays, the nostalgic longing for lost happiness, the anxious fluctuation between hope and despair, between pride and supplication, between irony and generosity, which in the end dissolve into a superhuman inner pain. The most diverse and opposite of sentiments, cruel deceptions, ambitious desires, burning tenderness, grievous sacrifices, all the torments of the heart, acquire in her singing that mysterious truth, I would like to say, that psychological sonority, which is the primary attraction of opera.


title: Maria Callas

text: Ethan Mordden writes, "It was a flawed voice. But then Callas sought to capture in her singing not just beauty but a whole humanity, and within her system, the flaws feed the feeling, the sour plangency and the strident defiance becoming aspects of the canto. They were literally defects of her voice; she bent them into advantages of her singing." Giulini believes, "If melodrama is the ideal unity of the trilogy of words, music, and action, it is impossible to imagine an artist in whom these three elements were more together than Callas." He recalls that during Callas's performances of "La traviata", "reality was onstage. What stood behind me, the audience, auditorium, La Scala itself, seemed artifice. Only that which transpired on stage was truth, life itself." Sir Rudolf Bing expressed similar sentiments:Once one heard and saw Maria Callas—one can't really distinguish it—in a part, it was very hard to enjoy any other artist, no matter how great, afterwards, because she imbued every part she sang and acted with such incredible personality and life. One move of her hand was more than another artist could do in a whole act.


title: Maria Callas

text: To Antonino Votto, Callas was:The last great artist. When you think this woman was nearly blind, and often sang standing a good 150 feet from the podium. But her sensitivity! Even if she could not see, she sensed the music and always came in exactly with my downbeat. When we rehearsed, she was so precise, already note-perfect... She was not just a singer, but a complete artist. It's foolish to discuss her as a voice. She must be viewed totally—as a complex of music, drama, movement. There is no one like her today. She was an esthetic phenomenon.


title: Maria Callas

text: During the early 1950s, an alleged rivalry arose between Callas and Renata Tebaldi, an Italian lyrico spinto soprano. The contrast between Callas's often unconventional vocal qualities and Tebaldi's classically beautiful sound resurrected an argument as old as opera itself, namely, beauty of sound versus the expressive use of sound.


title: Maria Callas

text: In 1951, Tebaldi and Maria Callas were jointly booked for a vocal recital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Although the singers agreed that neither would perform encores, Tebaldi took two, and Callas was reportedly incensed. This incident began the rivalry, which reached a fever pitch in the mid-1950s, at times even engulfing the two women themselves, who were said by their more fanatical followers to have engaged in verbal barbs in each other's direction.


title: Maria Callas

text: Tebaldi was quoted as saying, "I have one thing that Callas doesn't have: a heart" while Callas was quoted in "Time" magazine as saying that comparing her with Tebaldi was like "comparing Champagne with Cognac...No...with Coca Cola". However, witnesses to the interview stated that Callas had said only "champagne with cognac", and that it was a bystander who had quipped: "...No...with Coca-Cola." Nevertheless, the "Time" reporter attributed the latter comment to Callas.


title: Maria Callas

text: According to John Ardoin, however, these two singers should never have been compared. Tebaldi was trained by Carmen Melis, a noted verismo specialist, and she was rooted in the early 20th century Italian school of singing just as firmly as Callas was rooted in 19th century bel canto. Callas was a dramatic soprano, whereas Tebaldi considered herself essentially a lyric soprano. Callas and Tebaldi generally sang a different repertoire: in the early years of her career, Callas concentrated on the heavy dramatic soprano roles and later in her career on the bel canto repertoire, whereas Tebaldi concentrated on late Verdi and verismo roles, where her limited upper extension and her lack of a florid technique were not issues. They shared a few roles, including Tosca in Puccini's opera and "La Gioconda", which Tebaldi performed only late in her career.