TV REVIEW : BBC Offer: Callas Documentary
Maria Callas, who died rather mysteriously 11 years ago at the age of 53, continues to exert her special allure for serious opera-lovers as well as music-oriented necrophiles everywhere. A few weeks ago, PBS mustered a rather muddled documentary on the Greek-American-Italian diva as part of the vaunted Great Performance series. The result was neither great nor a performance.
Tonight at 6 and 10 on the Arts & Entertainment cable channel, the BBC gets unequal time. This hour-long ode, culled from an obviously longer British production, bears an ominously soapy title, “Maria Callas: Life and Art.”
Like the equally hyperbolic, remarkably similar American version, it offers much extra-operatic gossip, much idle speculation and little substance beyond nostalgia. At least it has a semblance of sequential order in its favor, and the potentially telling musical examples represent large performance snippets. PBS came up only with incoherent snippets of snippets.
Ultimately, the viewer is neither told nor shown enough about what made Callas an epochal singing actress. Still, the clues are fascinating.
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