return to the footsteps of La Callas in Milan, for the 100th anniversary of the singer’s birth

On Saturday, Maria Callas would have been 100 years old. The Greek singer notably left her mark on the history of La Scala in Milan, where she enjoyed her greatest successes.

December 2, 2023 will mark 100 years since the birth of Maria Callas. Of Greek nationality, the singer was born in New York to immigrant parents, and lived her last moments in Paris until her premature death in 1977, at the age of 53. But it was at La Scala in Milan, between 1950 and 1961, that she enjoyed her greatest success. Return to the soprano’s footsteps, in the city that made her a star.

In the La Scala hall a few hours before a show, technicians are busy on stage in front of 2,000 empty seats. Donatella Brunazzi directs the La Scala Theater Museum. From a dressing room facing the stage, she points to “Callas point”. “It’s on the left a little up frontshe explains. This is the point she preferred, from where the voice resounded best and spread throughout the room. I think it was more his voice that had this magnetic effect.”

Milanese evenings, after concerts at La Scala

The Milanese years were also the end of the evenings after the show. Anna Rita Briganti has just published a biography of Maria Callas. While walking around the neighborhood, she tells us about this “after Scala”, when the star was accompanied by her husband and impressario, Giovanni Battista Meneghini. “She walks, her fans follow her, Meneghini collects the bouquets of flowersshe describes. She is followed… Let’s imagine… By Luchino Visconti or Francesco Zeffirelli, and everyone goes to dinner. We entered the city’s covered salon, Vittorio Emmanuele Gallery. In these large, elegant restaurants, around large tables, the worlds of cinema, opera, theater, the upper bourgeoisie. And for a moment, she became Maria again.”

For her evenings in the fashion city, Maria had a seamstress, Biki. The house closed today but one of the centenary exhibitions revives its memory, among a collection of photos of Callas. “In Biki’s workshop, all the women were dressed, from the bourgeoisie but also from the Milanese nobilitysays Barbara Costa, head of the historical archives of the Intesa San Paolo bank. It meant having reached the pinnacle of success, including from a social point of view.” All that remains of Callas’ house in Milan is a souvenir plaque… But it is throughout the city that Callas’ name is engraved.