Callas - A Documentary Plus Bonus / John Ardoin, Franco Zeffirelli

Pay with

About Callas - A Documentary Plus Bonus / John

Extensive performance footage including some real rarities. Newsreel footage: her funeral cortege; the Rome Walkout ("I would spit in the faces of my enemies...and make them go on their knees in front of me! I can! I will! And I must!"); her break with Ghiringhelli, Callas reading Bing's telegram firing her ("I cannot do routine"); Meneghini, Onassis and Churchill; Callas hounded by the press on her private life; Callas dancing with Onassis; her return to New York (1965); press conference about the Medea film (plus clips from the film); Callas as co-stage director with Di Stefano, directing Vespri in Turin; in a bathing suit with Onassis; Onassis's death. Interviews: Bing ("She became intolerable!"..."She was more difficult than others because she was more intelligent"); Nicola Rescigno ("Her body was like that of a pachyderm"); Menotti; Scotto (on Sonnambula and Medea--"Cut Glauce's aria"); Caballé; Gobbi on her lost confidence and unhappiness; De Hidalgo on Callas as a student; manager Gorlinsky on the Callas-Di Stefano concert tour; Tebaldi on their rivalry; Visconti in discussion with Callas, including the "radish" incident. Other topics: Sound vs. the use of sound; her debut at 15; "No agent would give me a job because immediately after my debut I wasn't loved that much. I was something new to listen to and they disliked anything that took them away from tradition"; her history at La Scala; her weight loss; Jackie Onassis; Zeffirelli and Gobbi on the London Toscas, her loneliness, her death.