Callas Paris 1958

Director: Tom Volf (France). Year of Release: 2023

Paris, December 19th 1958. Maria Callas has just arrived at the Gare de Lyon. News reports are speculating on whether she will turn up for this evening’s performance. But this is no mystery story. Of course she’ll be there. Callas’s concert at the Opéra National de Paris – the first ever performance of the “voice of the twentieth Century” in France – has been tightly prepared for a long time. A gallery of celebs and royals are waiting in the audience.

Callas takes to the stage wearing a red dress, blue eye shadow, and an expensive necklace. She is encircled by a group of women singers in white blouses and black skirts. Behind them is the male choir dressed in black suits and bow ties. It is all very formal. Callas proceeds to sing Bellini’s Casta Div, followed by Verdi’s Miserere and Rossini’s Una voce poco fa from the Barber of Seville. In the second half of her set, she sings an extract from Puccini’s Tosca.

Advance warning. This review is going to be more about me than even my usual solipsistic rants. This is because, although the trailer implied that the film would be about the cultural phenomenon of Maria Callas, in truth its only a concert film. And yes, I know I should be careful with that “only”. Amazing Grace, one of my favourite films of recent years, was only footage of Aretha Franklin singing in a church. But Aretha speaks (and sings) to me in a way that this sort of opera does not.

My parents were born in the early 1940s – my mother in 1940, the same year as the oldest Beatle (Ringo), and my father in 1943, the same year as the youngest (George). They were quite possibly from the last generation of working class kids who had no relation at all to pop and rock music. When I was growing up, pretty much the only music that played in the house, outside my bedroom, was opera. It is a genre which I learned to quietly hate.

And it wasn’t accessible opera with tunes you can sing along to. I never remember hearing any Carmen. Instead it consisted of warbley sopranos hitting and holding very high notes or making their way through the whole scale before they reached the note to which were heading. Or it was male singers declaiming reams and reams of tuneless expositionary text. And by tuneless, I don’t mean out of tune, but dialogue which stayed on one or two notes as the message is conveyed.

It’s all convention, of course, as is the unconvincing demonic laugh which we occasionally hear from the preposterous make singers. This was all parodied brilliantly by Dudley Moore in Die Flabbergast, the song he wrote and sung for the 1960 stage performance of Beyond the Fringe. I’m not sure this would work any more, as I don’t think that enough kids are unwillingly exposed to the sort of opera that is supposed to be good for you as I was way back when.

I am well aware that all this makes me sound like the sort of person who still can’t get along with Shakespeare because they were dragged along to too many impenetrable plays when they were at school. In a sense, the comparison is apt. It’s not about whether or not the performance is Any Good. Maria Callas is a great singer. I know she must be because so many people have told me so. This does not contradict the fact that I find her performance here emotionally stilted.

What I’m trying to say is this. Callas Paris 1958 documents a world historical performance. People who like this sort of thing (of which there are many) should be overjoyed about its availability and should rush to see the film. At the same time, the film leaves me entirely cold. It is not just that this is an art genre which I don’t understand (or maybe don’t want to understand), I don’t think I could understand it because there are too many barriers in my way.

At the end of the film, a voiceover tries to make a case for Callas’s acting ability, for which there is some on screen evidence, Callas is clearly a master of subtly switching her gaze into a different direction or showing more emotion on her face than most stage actors are capable of. The question remains: how much of this is visible to people watching in remote opera seats? Opera relies on the grand gestures. If anything, Callas’s acting may be too subtle for the medium in which she works.

Maybe music is a more subjective art form than any other. You can see a play, or read a book, and know that, even if the words don’t mean much to you, you can see why other people find them moving. I literally could not watch this Callas performance and understand what people enjoyed from it. Don’t get me wrong. I am sure that there are people who find this performance superlative. I am just unable to personally empathise and recognise why they find it so good.

What does this mean in a film review? Normally, if I don’t like a film, I can find an objective reason why it doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t necessarily expect anyone else to share my objection, but at least it’s something I can justify. With Callas Paris 1958 all I can say is that I didn’t enjoy it at all. You might. This neither means that I am better than you nor that you are better than me. Taste, and especially musical taste, can be strange like that, can’t it?

Basically, what I am saying is, it’s not you, it’s me. You may really enjoy this film. You may hate it. I just think that whatever I have to say on it is relatively irrelevant for your experience.