Maria Callas on the David Frost Show, December 10, 1970.
Maria Callas on the David Frost Show, December 10, 1970.
Maria Callas: I enjoy challenge: here I have had two challenges. First, to express the passion and turbulence of this ancient legend in a way that makes sense to a modern cinema audience. Second, I had to learn to act in front of a camera, and act without singing. I do not sing in this film.
Acting in front of a camera is different from acting in the theater, especially in the presentation of opera. On the stage it is necessary to makes gestures with the hands and arms and to assume expressions which can be seen at a great distance, at the back of the stalls and above in the gallery. When performing opera, singing while you act, the movements must be even more obvious because they must be exaggerated to make their full contribution to expression in that particular medium.
Again, the actor is frequently one of a huge group of people on the stage, many of whom are also simultaneously making movements. He must act so tat he can be distinguished from the others. This does not mean that e should try to compete for the attention of the audience, you understand. Not at all. A great actor distinguishes himself by his mere presence, by the idiosyncracy of his gestures and the authority of his movements. The great actor does not have to dress differently from the rest; the public picks him out almost at once. But he, too, must act for an audience sitting at a distance from him. And for him, too, the cinema is different. The camera watches him from perhaps a few feet away. It can come if it wants to, and peer at him from a few inches.
Then, because in film you are speaking your love or your grief, which is natural, whereas singing about it is not, your gestures must be more natural, too. They must be restrained. And because the microphone may be only a few inches from your lips - every whisper, every sigh, every murmur can be heard a hundred yards away - you must be subtle. But each gesture must be perfect, or as near as you can, because the mobility of the camera ensures that the person who dramatically ought to be in the eye of the audience is so; the audience have only to look at one person at a time, and they look hard. It is scrutiny. And you must not annoy the audience by doing things outside this tiny field of vision; you must not wave a hand where the camera cannot see it.
Maria Callas: I am never satisfied. At least, I am never satisfied with my work. I am personally incapable of enjoying what I have done well because I see so magnified the things I could have done better. But, yes, at any rate I have managed, as you say, to "adapt."
Kenneth Harris: What is your Medea about? In the Greek legend, she helps Jason to discover the Golden Fleece and then when, after ten years, Jason tires of her and decides to marry the King of Corinth's daughter, Medea revenges herself on him. Is that the theme of your Medea?
Maria Callas: Yes; that is the same Medea. But the film does not give the whole of the legend, and we have given our own rendering of it. If you come to see it, do not expect a film version of Cherubini's opera or the drama of Euripides.
Maria Callas: As a role, yes, very much. As a person, no. I understand the Medea whom I play, and I have compassion for her. She kills only because she is in despair. She kills her children because she feels she has no other choice, and because being a goddess she can remove them from this bitter and bloody world, and enable them to join her in everlasting life: she kills so they may live in peace and dignity. She knows there will be no hope of that for them in this world, so she commits them to the next. She is fragile enough to be broken-hearted by Jason's treatment of her, but she is strong enough to deal with it as she feels she should.
Yet the role appeals to me very much. And, after all, it is a great opportunity to make your debut in the world of film at the top: no aspiring film actress could have a better start. But if you mean does the woman Medea appeal to me, the answer is no. She can be a cruel woman, and I do not like cruelty, and I could never be cruel. No, I like the role, but I do not like Medea.
Kenneth Harris: Of all the roles you have played, which is the woman among them who most appeals to you?
Maria Callas: Bellini's Norma. When she finds herself in a terrible crisis of love, she chooses death rather than hurt the man she loves, even though he has betrayed her.
You must not think this is a film of bloodshed, hate, and fury. It is not a horror film. There are too many such films already. There is too much violence in too many movies, sometimes in theater production. I dislike violence, and I find it artistically inefficient. Where it is necessary to include the shedding of blood, the suggestion of the action is more moving than the exhibition of it. I always eliminated the knife when singing Lucia: I thought it was a useless and old-fashioned business, that the action could get in the way of the art, and realism interferes with the truth.
We have reduced the bloodshed in Medea to the minimum - Pasolini has the same attitude as I have in this matter. It is not only that we have tried to eliminate much of the violence: we have taken much of the sound and fury out of the original story, by what I would call significant silences. There are comparatively long passages in which no words are spoken.
Kenneth Harris: I imagine that one of the difficulties was that you had to learn your new job while actually doing it?
Maria Callas: Yes, but it is amazing what can sometimes be done by thinking about the problem in advance. Intuition and response to the actual experience of the problem are essential, and ultimately it is at that point that the artist solves the problem of his art. But you can think ahead. You can figure things out. Also, I am quick to learn. That is not a boast. Some great minds learn slowly - some inferior minds learn very quickly. It is a matter of what gear the machinery works in. I happen to learn quickly. When I made the film, the people I worked with said that I had adapted more effectively than they had expected. This is because I had anticipated the problem, and in applying the solution I had figured out to the actual situation. I had thought quickly.
Also, I was helped by the stimulus of living and performing in another world. The people I worked with were very kind and encouraging to me, and they were very gifted. I did not know how I would get on with Pasolini. He is an introvert, and I am an introvert, and we did not know each other before the film: I wondered if we would be like two Great Walls of China, facing each other, staring at each other, and saying nothing. But no. There was the maximum communication between us. We found we thought about the film, its problems and its theme, in the same way, along the same lines, and wanted to achieve the same objects. He is concerned only with the purity of the artistic product, and he will sacrifice everything to get it. He is not, as so many even gifted artists are, taken off is course by egotism of any kind, especially artistic egotism, which is the most insidious kind, because it masks self-will as a stubborn dedication to this or that artistic value. His eye is always on the work being produced, not on his way of producing it.
I am like that. I do not think: "How should Callas sing this, play that?" I think "How should this song best be sung? How should these words best be spoken?" and then work hard to try to do it. I got on with Pasolini because I listened to what he said, discussed it, and then when we agreed I did it.
I am a simplifier. Some people were born complicated, born to complicate. I was born simple, born to simplify. I like to reduce a problem to its elements, so I can see clearly what I have to do. Simplifying your problem is halfway to solving it. It is with life as it is with art. To simplify a problem is not to solve it, not even to make it easier, but it enables you to concentrate your energies on a real solution. Of course, if you are going to simplify, you must face up to what you find. Some people complicate in order to veil. If you are going to simplify, you must have courage.
Also, to simplify habitually, you need not only the right kind of mind, but the right kind of temperament. You must be cool, capable of being cool, and want to be cool. Many people want to raise the temperature. Always. It is though they had a kind of low emotional blood pressure - they feel they cannot do anything, cannot survive, cannot function unless they work themselves up.
Before I did my screen test for Medea I invited Pasolini to dinner. I said: "If I do this film, and at any time my treatment of the role or my performance in general causes problems for you, do not go to anyone else - come right away and tell me. I shall try to do what you want. You are the director. I am the interpreter, and I shall try to make the role my own to give it back to the public. It is the public that must benefit from what I do. And you, for me as I make the film, must be the public. As I interpret the role for the public, you will be interpreting the public to me. We must therefore resolve all our problems."
So, if Pasolini and I had any difficulty about how something should be done, which was rare, we just sat down and talked about it. We sorted things out. It is not hard for intelligent people to overcome their difficulties if they act grown up and not like children. Intelligent people sometimes behave like children, and it is usually because they want to. Because they cannot unravel a situation, they regress.
Kenneth Harris: It's interesting to hear you say you are not temperamental because many people, as a result of reading about you in the newspapers, seem to have the impression that you are in fact a very temperamental person.
Maria Callas: I am a passionate, but about work and about justice. I am a passionate artist and a passionate human being. I am impatient when I am asked to conform to standards of work and bevavior which I know are inferior. You say that many people have this or that impression of me because of what they read in some newspaper: I think that is so. But I do not write in the newspapers. Much of what I read about myself in the newspapers is wrong. Sometimes I do not recognize the woman who is written about in the newspapers.
Maria Callas: Sometimes, often, even in the middle of a performance, I have said to myself: "You are no good. You can't take it. You must give it up. It is not worth the effort." But what is there in life if you do not work? If you do not work there is only sensations, and there are only a few sensations - you cannot live on them. You can only live on work, by work, through work.
What do you do if you do not work? I do not understand. Perhaps some people who do not work pass the time in talking of themselves. I do not want to talk about myself. I find me boring. It is what I do that interests me, not what I say. How can you exist if you do no do things, and how can you exist with self-respect if you do not do things as well as lies in you? And how can you achieve that if you do not work at it?
So, to live in a way you can tolerate for yourself you must work. Work very hard. I do not believe with Descartes: "I think: therefore I am." With me, it is "I work: therefore I am."
Kenneth Harris: Do you think that music is the only thing that matters in life?
Maria Callas: No, not at all. Communication is the most important thing in life. It is what makes the human predicament bearable. And art is the most profound way in which one person can communicate with another. Music is the highest way of saying things. But it is not the only way. As for me, I could easily have moved into another field when I was young. And I would have worked at it . . . I do nt ask for anything. I let things and people come to me . . . Why not ask, you might ask. That is how I am, the basis of my nature. Maybe it is because I do not ant the risk of being refused. Maybe it is pride. But I do not want to ask. I do not want to command, I do not want to be able to command - in public r in private life. I let things come to me, and I do not complain if they go away again.
The Observer, February 8 and 15, 1970
