The former home of legendary American born Greek soprano Maria Callas in Athens is set to be renovated to house the ‘Academy of Lyric Art Maria Callas’, a non-profit university-level theatrical school.
Located not far from Athens’ National Archaeological Museum, on the corner of Patision Avenue (28th October) and Skaramagka street; the 1500 square-metre apartment building erected in 1925 in the Jugendstil (youth style) mode of Art-Nouveau architecture, is yet another of the city’s iconic residences.
Callas lived in the building between 1937 and 1945, when she along with her mother Litsa and sister Jackie returned to Greece from New York following her parents’ divorce.
Her journey to operatic prominence began around the same time when after her unsuccessful enrolment attempt at the Athens Conservatoire she was enrolled in the Greek National Conservatoire.
Here her tutor Maria Trivella described her as a “model student… singing the most difficult arias in the international opera repertoire with the utmost musicality.”
By the time she left Greece in 1945, Callas had given 56 performances in seven operas. Returning to the United States where she reunited with her father, she was favourably received by the general manager of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera, Edward Johnson.
Her career then took her to Italy in 1946 from which point on her rise to stardom was increasingly meteoric, remembered by the end of her professional life for her musicality, artistry and singular stylistic acting.
Updated plans for the reinstatement of her teenage home as a school for the arts were announced at a conference on 2 December, the 99th anniversary of her birth.
Athens’ mayor Kostas Bakoyannis said on social media that “the municipality of Athens has managed to secure the necessary European resources and proceed with the tendering of the project by Anaplasi S.A.,” a major Greek engineering firm.
Despite languishing for a period, the renovation, originally forecasted to have been completed earlier this year with operations slated to commence in October, it’s now said the project will come to fruition in 2025.
Bakoyannis, alongside president of the academy Vaso Papantoniou, confirmed at the presser that full financing for the 6.8-million-euro project had been secured.
He described the development as “a gift for Athens and all of us.”
This news comes together with the Greek Culture Ministry’s announcement that the centennial of Callas’ birth will be included on UNESCO’s celebratory list of anniversaries for 2023.
