Nigel Douglas wrote: "If you want the unvarnished truth about a prima donna, ask another." He was writing about Adele Leigh vis-a-vis Kathleen Ferrier.

But what that quote brings to my mind is Lanfranco Rasponi's book of interviews called The Last Prima Donnas. Rasponi is dead, and so is practically everyone whom he interviewed; but some of those interviews are a glimpse into a century long past, and a tradition of which some parts survive and some are gone. Rasponi had an ax to grind, being the former promotor for Renata Tebaldi, and thus the competition with Callas actually informed his livelihood. However, what these retired professional singers, some of them much much older than Rasponi, have to say about Callas is sometimes disarming. Had to bring this up in response to dear Mister Shaw.

Most often said to Rasponi, regarding Callas: "She sang with three voices!"   The really elderly Italian women, however, are mostly more discerning. "She sang with three voices, only one of which was authentic," says one of them.

Augusta Oltrabella, old enough to have sung for Toscanini, offered a unique reminiscence. Oltrabella was on a first-name basis with Elvira de Hidalgo, another famous opera artist, who invited Oltrabella to come and hear a very young woman who was a promising student of de Hidalgo's. De Hidalgo specialized in the coloratura niche, the "soprano leggiero." And this was the specialty that de Hidalgo spent years of schooling on Maria Callas, whom Oltrabella recalled, reminiscing on the invitation, as a young woman so obese as to resemble a whale, and obviously too poor to afford shoes that fit; the shoes on her feet were literally torn so that her feet could get inside them. And young Callas owed to de Hidalgo the coloratura technique which she demonstrated, at the time, to Oltrabella.

This, declares Oltrabella, was Callas at her best: doing what she had been trained by her teacher to do, before the conductors, stage directors, and promotors got their greedy hot little hands on her. To hear Callas at her most reliable, one has to turn one's back on Tosca, Turandot, La Gioconda, Andrea Chenier, Medea, Norma, the high-profile dramatic stuff in which Callas exploited her personality traits. Instead, have another listen to things like I Puritani, La Sonnambula, the Bolero aria from I Vespri Siciliani.

Years ago, as a young accompanist, I enjoyed some conversations with a Greek mezzo-soprano, surely passed away by now, named Elena Nikolaidi, and remarked to her that listening to Callas sing the afore-mentioned Verdi Bolero sent chills along my spine. Nikolaidi said, "You are responding to her artistry. But remember this about Callas: she had everything, and she died without anything."