What is Maria Callas?
[[File:Maria Callas 1958.jpg|thumb|Maria Callas, 1958]] '''Maria Callas''' (December 3, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was a [[Greece|Greek]] [[soprano]]. She was one of the most famous and most [[controversy|controversial]] [[opera]] singers of the [[20th century]]. She had a very distinctive voice of great range, power and agility enabling her to sing a wide variety of roles and was a singer-actress of great dramatic intensity. She was [[nickname|dubbed]] ''La Divina'' (''The Divine One'') by her admirers. She was mainly associated with the [[Italy|Italian]] [[repertoire]], particularly [[Vincenzo Bellini|Bellini]]'s ''[[Norma (opera)|Norma]]'', [[Donizetti]]'s ''[[Lucia di Lammermoor]]'', [[Verdi]]'s ''[[La traviata]]'' and [[Puccini]]'s ''[[Tosca]]''. ==Life and career== Maria was born '''Maria Kalogeroupoulou''' at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center in [[New York City]], to Greek parents, she returned to [[Greece]] in 1937, with her mother and older sister. There, she studied singing with Elvira de Hidalgo, and made her debut while still a teenager with the Athens Opera in 1941. During a short return to America to visit her father in 1945, she auditioned at the [[Metropolitan Opera]] without success. Her first major break came with her Italian debut in [[Verona]] in 1947, as ''[[La Gioconda]]''. There, she met conductor Tullio Serafin who became her mentor and guided her towards the [[bel canto]] repertoire. She sang her first ''Norma'' in [[Florence]] in 1948, and the following year, as a last minute replacement, she appeared as Elvira in Bellini's ''[[I puritani]]'' in [[Venice]], which was to be her first great success. In 1949, she married industrialist Giovanni Battista Meneghini who became her manager. She was sometimes known as Maria Meneghini Callas after her marriage. Shortly after, she made her [[debut]] at [[La Scala]] in [[Milan]], where the major part of her career and greatest triumphs were to take place. In collaboration with conductors like Carlo Maria Giulini, [[Leonard Bernstein