Maria Callas Quotes

11 Sourced Quotes

When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping.

Maria Callas
The public is a monster and that is why I am not eager to return to the stage.

Maria Callas
It takes a little more time to get into the role, but not very much more. In making a record you don't have the sense of projection over a distance as in an opera house. We have this microphone and this magnifies all details of a performance, all exaggerations. In the theater, you can get away with a very large, very grand phrase. For the microphone, you have to tone it down. It's the same as making a film, your gestures will be seen in close-up, so they cannot be exaggerated as they would be in a theater.

Maria Callas
I admire Tebaldi's tone; it's beautiful — also some beautiful phrasing. Sometimes, I actually wish I had her voice.

Maria Callas
Don't talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I make the goddamn rules.

Maria Callas
That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil's means: great teachers foresee a pupil's ends.

Maria Callas
To sing is an expression of your being, a being which is becoming.

Maria Callas
An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.

Maria Callas
I would not kill my enemies, but I will make them get down on their knees. I will, I can, I must.

Maria Callas
Some say I have a beautiful voice, some say I have not. It is a matter of opinion. All I can say, those who don't like it shouldn't come to hear me.

Maria Callas
What [Tullio Serafin] said that impressed me was: "When one wants to find a gesture, when you want to find how to act on stage, all you have to do is listen to the music. The composer has already seen to that." If you take the trouble to really listen with your soul and with your ears — and I say soul and ears because the mind must work, but not too much also — you will find every gesture there. And it is all true, you know.

Maria Callas