Callas Details

Callas

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.

Starring	Maria Callas, Franco Zeffirelli, John Ardoin, Rudolf Bing, Gian Carlo Menotti, Gian Carlo Menotti, Tito Gobi, Renato Scotto, Nicola Rescigno, Montserrat Caballé, Renata Tebaldi
Director	Tony Palmer
Studio	PROPER NOTE
Run time	DVD: 1 hr 32 mins
Certificate
Genres	Documentary, Music/Musical
Language	DVD: English
Released	Production year: 1987 To Rent: DVD: 07 Mar 2005