Champ

At the dress rehearsal for the Metropolitan Opera's opening performance, Marlene Dietrich appeared with a present for the diva: a thermos full of hot beef broth. Marlene had decided that her new friend, Soprano Maria Meneghini Callas (TIME, Oct. 29), needed strength. She did indeed. Her native city was not going to bow down to Callas without a struggle.

On opening night, the applause for Callas' first entrance was cool, while crowds of standees, giving every appearance of an organized claque, cheered other members of the cast to the rafters. At the end of the first intermission, Soprano Zinka Milanov, one of Callas' rivals, dramatically sailed down the aisle to her seat and drew an ovation. But long before the final eleven curtain calls that held the audience well past midnight, long before Callas achieved a solo bow (though solo curtain calls are outlawed under General Manager Rudolf Bing), the critical crowd had capitulated. The customary cliches about musical battles did not apply; she did not "sing like an angel." and she did not "sing her way into the audience's heart." She sang if anything like a fascinating demon, and hers was a far more turbulent appeal than a mere sentimental coaxing of the heart. She pierced listeners with the most exciting operatic voice, the most compelling operatic presence, of her generation.

Giant Guitar. Bellini's Norma, which Callas had chosen for her New York de but, is a second-rate work. It is a rare operatic phenomenon in that the libretto is not much sillier than the score. The story takes place during the Roman occupation of Gaul. Norma is a Druid high priestess, who, though pledged to virginity in the service of the moon goddess, has borne two children of the Roman proconsul. When he casts her off for another Druid priestess, Norma arouses the local underground against him. But in the end she repents, publicly confesses her sins and goes to the fire with her lover, who, for obscure reasons, is ready to die with the girl with whom he did not wish to live. Norma is usually called a singers' opera, a triumph of bel canto, and it does have magnificent vocal passages, notably two duets for the two leading female singers. But (as Bernard Shaw once said of the young Verdi) Bellini's orchestra sounds like a giant guitar; it plinkety-plinks through embarrassing military airs, mindless rages and cloying romances.

In the energetic Met production, robust Tenor Mario del Monaco as Norma's lover sang loud enough to be heard from Gaul to Rome, and Mezzo-Soprano Fedora Barbieri, as Norma's rival, was adequate though often wobbly. Since she looks much the way Callas did before her celebrated slimming down, it was hard to see why the Roman governor would prefer her to Norma. But none of this mattered much with Callas on stage. As an actress, unlike most of her competitors, Callas radiates credibility even in the silliest situations. Her performance is not a mere recital with costumes and a few gestures, but a thing of passion and of peculiarly stylized and yet convincing movement that is distinctly her own.

Dazzling Endurance. Her voice has flaws, as the critics eagerly pointed out. Notably, on opening night, she became shrill in the upper register. But in the low and middle registers she sang with flutelike purity, tender and yet sharply disciplined, and in the upper reaches--shrill or not--she flashed a swordlike power that is already legend. In one of the repertory's most strenuous roles--Prima Donna Lilli Lehmann called Norma tougher than all three Briinnhildes--the Callas voice rose from her slender frame with dazzling endurance. No doubt, other great operatic sopranos can coax out of their ample, placid figures tones that esthetes call more beautiful. But just as the greatest beauties among women do not usually have flawlessly symmetrical features, the greatest voices are not characterized by a flawless marble perfection. Callas' voice and stage presence add up to more than beauty--namely the kind of passionate dedication, the kind of excitement that invariably mark a champ.

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