Posted: 11/19/2004

Callas Forever

(2004)

by Kristin Schrader

Official site here.

The word “diva” gets thrown around a lot these days. Everyone from skinny pop singers to demanding hairdressers have been assigned that epithet, and the meaning has been somewhat cheapened. There was a time, and not so long ago, when a diva was what it was. A distinguished female opera singer. It is an old cliché, the temperamental star hurls her prop, stops the performance, marches off stage. When a real diva is in action, though, there is a reason and a motive behind the display. To raise the bar for others and bring the attention to where it should be, on the star. Franco Zeffirelli’ s Callas Forever is a poignant and personal tribute to Maria Callas, whose passion for performance and need for validation defined her in all aspects of her life.

Callas Forever is set in the seventies. It opens with Jeremy Irons, playing Callas’ ex-manager and long-time friend Larry Kelly. He is promoting a punk band, and as he strides through the airport reporters shout at him, asking about the group. He answers, matter-of-factly and business-like, and then a single voice says “Will you see Callas when you’re in Paris?” The name drops so softly amongst the inconsequential questions about hotel room violations and childish misbehaviors. It is an artist in the crowd who knows Kelly’s connection to Callas. They talk, and it becomes evident that Kelly would love to be in contact with Callas, but that she has refused his calls, returned letters, and is always out of town, supposedly in the Greek Isles. Finally Kelly goes to her apartment, to see what is really going on.

What he finds is a broken and dejected Callas. A woman who can handle trivial social interaction, but just barely, who is insomniac, drug-dependant, and fixated on the past. Her voice has been destroyed, along with her heart. Maria Callas, played by Fanny Ardant, was the long-time lover of Aristotle Onassis. The world, and Callas, assumed that they would stay together, but after nine years coupled with Callas, Onassis took the widowed Jackie Kennedy as his bride, leaving Callas alone and without a part of her identity. Now Onassis is gone, and with him, seemingly, Callas’ will.

Kelly has a plan he has been longing to present to Callas. He remains in Paris, and starts a relationship with Michael, the artist who asked him about his plans at the airport. Callas is still beautiful and dramatic, but her voice has been destroyed by years of impassioned performance. What if she made a film of Carmen, where she performed lip-synching to an earlier, stronger recording? At first Callas rebuffs the idea. She has had an awful performance experience since her voice declined, and her fear of failure is strong. Eventually she is coaxed into performing again, and it is magic. The film is beautiful, and she comes to life again, coaxed by the attention and adoration of those who surround her. There are tantrums, flirtations, and all the peccadilloes that make life what Callas loves. Her emotions swing and the viewer sees how fragile this happiness is, and how truly dependant on the response of others Callas’ well-being is. The movie wraps, and it is time for her to revisit another great character, Tosca. Unfortunately Callas is perhaps a bit too emboldened by Carmen. She insists that this time she will perform.

Callas has no business performing, that is obvious, but her old friend acquiesces, and she prepares through a series of workshops, and throws herself passionately into this risky venture. She begins her aria, but her voice is not up to the strain, and this is Tosca ever heard before. She continues through, however, and gives a performance so complex and true that the diminished vocal quality is secondary to the raw purity of the character. The crowd is bowled over, but Callas is forced to face the truth about herself as a performer. She will never again sing the characters that made her great. Resigned she does not go forward with any more of the dubbing projects, and begs Kelly to destroy Carmen, which he reluctantly does. The world has heard the last of Callas.

Franco Zefferelli was a friend to Maria Callas, and this film is a tender testimony to his affection for her. He captures the subtleties of Callas’ emotions in a way that would be hard for someone who hadn’t actually known her, someone who could have been tempted to simplify her very public triumphs and tragedies. Casting Fanny Ardant in the role was exactly the right thing to do. Watching her is so close to watching Callas, but back stage and back home. It really is eerie, and it is hard to imagine another actress doing the role any justice. Irons’ Kelly is a sensitive friend to her, but has enough of his own agenda to make him interesting and a suitable companion to the larger than life star, and his boyfriend learns what it is like to live so close to a star. As his lover Michael, Jay Rodan gives a simple and sensitive performance, and Joan Plowright as writer Sarah Keller is another ancillary character who rings true in the world of great performers who are no longer on the stage.

This film is no biography of Maria Callas. The viewer does not learn of her metamorphosis into the prima donna from her birth as Cecilia Sofia Anna Maria Kalogeropoulos, born in New York but moved to Greece as a girl when her parents split. This woman was a hard working and intense performer, and was betrayed by her own voice’s fragility. She had no reason to expect to lose her abilities when she did, and like athletes that find their bodies can’t sustain the activity expected she was at a loss. Her heart was betrayed as well, and it was well known that she never recovered from the loss of Onassis, and that his death in 1975 left her bereft. Maria Callas died at the age of 53 in 1977. Callas Forever gives us a glimpse into how a truly tempestuous life, in public and private, can come to fruition. With a final grasp at what made it, and then a resignation not necessarily coupled with acceptance.

Kristin Schrader lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a devoted fan of Ms. Callas.

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