Current Reviews

        by Derek Lim

Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No. 1-3

Martha Argerich, piano
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor



Samuel Barber
Orchestral Works and Concertos
Leonard Slatkin, Charles Munch



Rimsky-Korsakov
Evgeny Svetlanov


Beethoven
Symphony No.9
Piano Transcription by Franz Liszt
Konstantin Scherbakov, Piano



Kronos Caravan

The life of Maria Callas has been reported by so many in biographies and accounts, all purporting to tell the true story and bring us closer to the great diva, that one is bound to come across repetitions and variations of stories as told in different accounts. This new book by Taylor Pero and Patrick C. Byme, the latter the founder of Ombra Records, an independant label devoted to releasing rare Callas recordings, takes a different tack.

The Colors of Callas attempts to bring us even closer to her life than before, with varying success. It doesn’t at all claim the accuracy that a true biography might bring and totally dispenses with the list of references and bibliography that want might expect in a biography. The sleeve blurb hits the nail in the head in claiming that the authors “have put together a compelling and, more importantly, entertaining picture” of her life.

What we have here is something much more like a drama about Callas rather than a report. Take the thirteenth chapter for instance, which starts: “Maria’s taste in popular music was considerably less sophisticated than her choice in classical composers……Maria selected a favourite Frank Sinatra album. The unique baritone of Sinatra filled the room as Maria stared through the barren branches outside her window”. A stretch of the imagination is needed on the part of the reader to be involved in the story, which turns out in certain chapters like disparate scenes rather than as a continuous narrative.

The authors have obviously taken pains to paint the situations and circumstances that Callas might have found herself in, but I found myself more distracted than truly convinced by the execution. One problem I encountered was the inconsistency in grammar – sometimes reported tense, sometimes present continuous, as well as the many spelling mistakes throughout, for instance, “Toscannini”, and the sometimes stilted writing. Certainly this book could have done with a good deal of judicious editing.

Whether accurate or not, the book does feature many anecdotal delights, some of which I have only come across here, and many of them do prove entertaining. Still, a simple list of references would have made me more certain that what I was reading was in some degree the truth rather than something that might have been confabulated. Also, an index would have been very useful, since the chapters are by no means written in any discernable chronological order and go only by titles such as “Black Clouds over the Eternal City” and “From Gold to Platinum”. The chapter titles are poetic, to be sure, if attaching colours to moods is your thing, but they prove supremely useless. If I wanted to know in which chapter Leonard Bernstein was mentioned, for example, do I look up “Golden Curtains” or “Amber Waves of Grain”? To top it all, no contents are listed, so you’ll have to flip through the book in search of the chapter you’re interested in, assuming you remember its title.

All in all, this book will be of prime interests to fans of Callas who have perused the number of biographies written about her (and there are many) and are in search of something different, and the anecdotes not covered by biographies. As a work of literature or research it is fatally flawed and there are too many caveats, as I have mentioned above, for me to recommend it to the general music- (or opera-) lover interested in the life of this great artist. The money would be better spent buying her recordings, or indeed, a proper biography.

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