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FULL LA CALLAS (Clint Borzoni) New Opera & Birthday Celebration Seattle WA 2025 Sarah Fletcher, Micah Parker, Derek Sellers, Emilie Faiella
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: LA CALLAS A Birthday Celebration
- Composer: Borzoni
- Libretto: Elizabeth Coppinger Clint
- Venue & Opera Company: Art Love Salon, Seattle, Washington
- Recorded: December 7, 2025
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Sarah Fletcher, Micah Parker, Derek Sellers, Emilie Faiella, Darrell J. Jordan, Rosamund Dyer, Virgina Elizondo, Karen Early Evans, Cary Lee, Michael David Dunlap
- Conductor:
- Orchestra: Instrumental Ensemble
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Puget Sound Concert Opera
- Date Published: 2025
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
- Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
La Callas is a new opera that celebrates the life of Maria Callas. Set in the 1950s and 60s, it tells the story of Maria Callas and her relationship with Aristotle Onassis. This is a story filled with intense passion, struggle, and betrayal. La Callas lauds Maria Callas not only for her great artistry, but also for her strength, sacrifices, and triumphs. Maria Callas persevered through pain and hardship to create an enduring legacy as a powerful and talented woman whose voice and spirit ignited the world of opera.
Part One:
La Callas – New Work in Progress
– The evening opens with a concert-style reading of Act I from La Callas, a new opera by Northwest librettist Elizabeth Coppinger and New York composer Clint Borzoni.
The work explores the life of Maria Callas through a contemporary lens. The cast includes ten singers, accompanied by piano. Projected supertitles will enhance accessibility.
INTERMISSION
Part Two: Maria Callas in Her Own Voice
– Audiences will experience a curated selection of arias and scenes from operas that defined Callas’s career.
These performances—also presented in concert style—will be interwoven with live commentary by Regina Thomas, creating a chronological narrative of Callas’s artistic evolution and personal milestones. This segment features the same vocal cast, now joined by a chamber ensemble of piano, flute, violin, and cello, to bring Callas’s most iconic roles to life.
The opera begins as two Greek gods, Zeus and Hera, place a wager on whether a man of action or a powerful woman can have the greater impact on the world.
At the Paris Opera after a Maria Callas performance, the gods watch as Maria, the world’s most famous soprano, enters a room filled with her fans alongside her elderly husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini. She sings of the beauty of true art. Aristotle Onassis, the world’s richest man, is there with his young wife, Tina. He speaks to Callas about their shared Greek heritage and invites her to join them on his yacht. After Maria leaves, Ari declares that such a vibrant, beautiful woman should be with a true Greek hero; she must be with him. Zeus and Hera are delighted that they have found their two worthy mortals.
On the Onassis yacht, a few months later, Maria and Ari have fallen deeply and passionately in love. Maria feels truly alive for the first time in her life. They decide to leave their spouses to be together. Zeus and Hera give the couple their greatest gift, true love as Callas and Onassis pledge their eternal love to each other.
Five years later, cracks are showing in the relationship, Ari wants her to give up performing. Maria is angry that Ari is still philandering. Ari says that he only loves Callas and she softens and is ready to give up her career for marriage and children. Ari does not want children and gives her an ultimatum; she must give up her dream of becoming a mother or he will leave her. Callas decides that she will sacrifice everything for love.
Three years later, on the morning of Ari’s’ surprise marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy, Callas asks the gods for strength to survive this betrayal. Hera allows Maria to see what the future holds and Callas enters a dream state and is joined there by Ari. The gods show them that his future will be full of terrible pain and loss. She comforts him that they will always love each other; the gods have united them for life. Her vision ends. Alone on stage, Callas sings of her future, sustained by art and her own strength. Zeus congratulates Hera that she has won the wager. Unlike Onassis, Callas will be remembered by generations to come.