page_title: Maria Callas
section_title: Family life, childhood and move to Greece
hierarchical_section_title: Maria Callas / Early life / Family life, childhood and move to Greece
caption_attribution_description: English: Maria Callas house in Athens Ελληνικά: Η πολυκατοικία, όπου έζησε η Μαρία Κάλλας
context_page_description: Maria Callas, Commendatore OMRI was an American-born Greek soprano. She 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.
  Born in Manhattan 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 turned herself from a heavy woman into a svelte and glamorous one after a mid-career weight loss, which might have contributed to her vocal decline and the premature end of her career.
context_section_description: The name on Callas's New York birth certificate is Sophie Cecilia Kalos. She was born at Flower 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), although she was christened Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos (Greek: Μαρία Άννα Καικιλία Σοφία Καλογεροπούλου). Callas's father had shortened the surname Kalogeropoulos first to "Kalos" and subsequently to "Callas" to make it more manageable.
  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. 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 Greek neighborhood of Astoria, Queens.
  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 in turn 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.
caption: The apartment house in Athens where Callas lived from 1937 to 1945
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