VIVA THE DIVAS

Maria Callas

The outstanding soprano singer of the 20th century died at her Paris home of a heart attack in 1977. She was 53.

Her one-time artistic director Michel Glotz said: “I have just seen her on her bed. It was the image itself of as she performed it in 1956 at Milan’s La Scala. There was not a line on her face. It seems like she was just resting.”

On January 2, 1958, Maria wasn’t resting when, having opened the Rome season with Norma, she lost her voice at the end of the first act and refused to continue — even though Italy’s president, Giovanni Gronchi, was in the audience.

Not long after, she began a nineyear affair with tycoon Aristotle Onassis that ended when he met John F Kennedy’s widow Jackie.

Maria was alleged to have aborted his child.

Joan Sutherland

Heralded as “the voice of the century” and nicknamed ‘La Stupenda’, she said in a 1961 interview with the London Times:

“I love all those demented old dames of the old operas. All right, so they’re loony. The music’s wonderful.”

The great raconteur Peter Ustinov recalled chancing upon her in rehearsal at Covent Garden. Joan sang beautifully until she stopped and let out a roar in her Australian accent: “Aaaaah, I can’t get that fucking note!”

Kiri Te Kanawa

“We were singing All I Ask of You from The Phantom of the

Opera,” Aled Jones recalled of working with Kiri. “Just as we hit the chorus, a little head poked out at me. Dame Kiri was keeping her tiny dog warm inside her coat!”