Many critics praised her bel canto technique, wide-ranging voice and dramatic interpretations. Her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti , Bellini , and Rossini , and further to the works of Verdi and Puccini , and in her early career to the music dramas of Wagner. Born in Manhattan and raised in Astoria, Queens, New York City, to Greek immigrant parents, she was raised by an overbearing mother who had wanted a son. Maria received her musical education in Greece at age 13 and later established her career in Italy.
Forced to deal with the exigencies of s wartime poverty and with near-sightedness that left her nearly blind on stage, she endured struggles and scandal over the course of her career. She underwent a mid-career weight loss, which might have contributed to her vocal decline and the premature end of her career. The press exulted in publicizing Callas' temperamental behavior, the alleged Callas- Tebaldi rivalry, and her love affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
Although her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press, her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her "the Bible of opera", [ 3 ] and her influence so enduring that, in , Opera News wrote of her: "Nearly thirty years after her death, she's still the definition of the diva as artistβand still one of classical music's best-selling vocalists.
Callas' father had shortened the surname Kalogeropoulos, first to Kalos and subsequently to Callas to make it more manageable. George and Litsa Callas were an ill-matched couple from the beginning. George was easy-going and unambitious, with no interest in the arts, and Litsa was vivacious and socially ambitious and had dreamed of a life in the arts, which her middle-class parents had stifled in her childhood and youth.
Petros, distrustful of George, had warned his daughter, "You will never be happy with him. If you marry that man, I will never be able to help you. Vassilis's death from meningitis in the summer of dealt another blow to the marriage.
