In a Medea performance that didn't go too well, there were murmurs and maybe even catcalls. At one crucial plot line, where she is supposed to address Giasone, she turned to the audience and uttered Medea's desperate plea "ho datto tutto a te" (I gave you everything I have).
In a Pirata performance, at the time where the Meneghinis were constantly clashing with La Scala's superintendant Ghiringelli, Calla-Imogene ostentatiously pointed at the superintendant's theater box and sang "La! Vedete, il palco funesto" ("There - look: the dreadful scaffold"). In the opera, the word palco refers to the scaffold where her lover will be hanged. But this italian word can also be used to designate a theater box. Although Ghiringelli was not in his box that night, the anecdote was widely circulated across Italy. She made news as no other opera star has ever done before or since.
LP
Another such incident that has passed into operatic folk lore now, is Callas's first performance in Italy after the scandal of her walking out half way through a performance of
Norma, before the President of Italy, due to illness. It was at a revival of
Anna Bolena at La Scala. Such was the bad feeling that the Italian press had whipped up against her, that La Scala, fearing an incident, had positioned plains clothes police all over the theatre, and riot police surrounded the theatre outside. Visconti re-directed some of the scenes so as to give Callas a certain amount of protection on stage in case of flying missiles from the audience. Throughout the first act the audience had reacted to her with icy coldness, loudly applauding her colleagues. By the finale of the First Act, Callas had had just about as much as she could stomach. This is the scene where Henry VIII finds her in compromising circumstances and tells the guards to take her to prison. Anna, utterly outraged, launches the exciting
stretta to the finale with the words
Giudice! Ad Anna! Giudice! (Judges! for Anna!). At this point, Callas pushed aside the guards, marched down to the footlights, and hurled the words into the audience, as much as to say "how dare you judge me", singing the rest of the scene with a scorching brilliance, incredible even for her. The audience were completely won over and from then to the end of the opera, she had them in the palm of her hands. Word of her success, apparently reached the crowds of people waiting outside the theatre, and, when she appeared at the stage door after the performance,the police found themselves having to restrain not an angry mob, but hordes of fans trying to besiege her with floral tributes. Unfortunately when she returned home that night, exhausted from her triumph, it was to find the gates of the Meneghini villa daubedwith dog excrement and the walls covered in insulting graffiti. And we wonder why her career was so short!
As an adjunct, it should be noted that Callas actually sued the Rome Opera for not having an understudy available on the night of that walk out, and for not fulfilling their subsequent contracyual obligations. The case dragged on for years, and eventually was settled totally in her favour. But it was too late. By then she was no longer singing, though the damage done to her personally and her career was immense and irrevocable.
