Tony Palmer’s Film about Callas

Thursday, March 19, 7:00 pm

Tony Palmer’s vast filmography of over 100 films ranges from early works with The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, to the famous portraits with and about Walton, Britten, Stravinsky, Menuhin, John Osborne, Margot Fonteyn and Maria Callas.  His 7-hour 45-minute film on Wagner, starring Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave, was described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the most beautiful films ever made."  Among over 40 international prizes for his work are 12 Gold Medals at the New York Film & Television Festival, as well as numerous BAFTA (British Academy of Film & Television) and EMMY nominations and awards. He is the only person to have won the Prix Italia twice. In 1989, he was awarded a huge retrospective of his work at the National Film Theatre in London, the first maker of arts films to be so honored.

Palmer joined the BBC from Cambridge University. Following an apprenticeship with Ken Russell and Jonathan Miller, his first major film, Benjamin Britten & his Festival, became the first BBC film to be networked in the United States.  With his second film, All My Loving, an examination of rock 'n' roll and politics in the late 1960s, he achieved considerable notoriety overnight.

Palmer was fascinated with Maria Callas—both her career and her personal life.  Some of what so captured his interest in Callas is expressed in his own words below:

“Considering her colossal influence and in contrast to the pumped-up, preposterous, overpaid pipsqueak divas of today, her actual international career was tiny—18 years at most.”

“In spite of her reputation, her cancellation record was the lowest of any great singer of her day.” 

“She rarely looked at the conductor during an opera, simply because she could not see him—she was very short-sighted, and often appeared (partly as a result) to be in a trance while on stage.” 

“She was betrayed by most of those intimate with her throughout her life, and eventually abandoned by many of those who should have known better and who claimed to have loved her.” 

“She died almost penniless—even her grotesquely rich long-time lover, Onassis, whose marriage to Jackie Kennedy she only discovered by watching the 6 o’clock news, had invested her money in half a cargo boat, which sank.  Paradoxically, although she died 30 years ago, her records today outsell every other recorded classical artist, and single handedly keep EMI Classical afloat.”

“Hers was not the most beautiful voice of her time, as she frequently admitted. Some days it worked; other days it just didn’t.”

“In the end, those who met her in Paris in the seventies agree that she was one of the loneliest, most desperate of women they had ever encountered, slowly drugging herself to death.  ‘Everyday, than God, is one day less,’ she told Di Stefano.  A summons to tea (for half an hour at most) often lasted until the early hours, with the guest or guests pleaded with not to leave.”

“It was pathetic and horrible, but it was Callas.  It was always Callas, and that was the secret and the magic.  We witness on stage a broken woman who sings nakedly from her heart, about herself and her life, who acts with such incredible power and unashamed truth that we stagger back before what we know, in our hearts, is all of her.  No artifice here; no vulgar posturings to which the absurd imitators—and there are many—aspire.  Gheorghiu, Battle, Garrett—they cannot touch her hem.”

“Maria—just a woman, who often spoke of Callas in the third person, in trouble, asking, begging sometimes, for our understanding and our love.  She deserves it, because there was no greater singing actress in our time.  And she was only 53 when she died.”

Palmer lives with his wife Michela, their sons Angelo and Gabriele and their daughter Apollonia in England.  He is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and an honorary citizen of both New Orleans and Athens.