Maria Callas, la Diva: where and how a voice becomes central?

Ninety years ago the Flower Hospital staff  in Manhattan heard the first waves of what to become one of the greatest voices ever recorded in our human history: Maria Callas, born Maria Cecilia Kalos (Kalogeropoulos) (1923-1977).

Callas, plus her mythical voice, had great dramatic talents, and the convergence of both led her to be called La Diva, not a diva but the Diva. Her performance of Tosca (of Puccini) can be considered as an ultimate legendary achievement in history of opera.

The memory of Maria Callas let us think of two questions which can be interesting to be analysed in a geographical way:

1- Where, geographically speaking, “central voices” appear? We always measure what we know: many beautiful voices are known, but how many very beautiful ones remain anonymous?! Then, where do most central voices come from? Mediterranean? People who do know how to trill r’s? North America? Slavic countries? All these together? None of these? It can be interesting for a geography-music thesis!

2- Is a “central voice” a mere voice or is it a mixture of voice and performance? If the first question above can be answered, can we find a correlation, geographically speaking, between distribution of central voices and the one of some particular vocal performances?

Many other questions, but one answer is sure: there is a correlation between the beautiful (the subjective), the central and the exceptional. Callas’ voice is a physical incarnation of this correlation.

Photo credit: Last fm.