Top 13 Callas Quotes & Sayings

I will not enter into a public feud with Madame Callas, since I am well aware that she has considerably greater competence and experience at that kind of thing than I have.

In those days, you had to like one or the other. You couldn't like Sutherland AND Callas.

For sheer strength of character, I wouldn't have dared to cross swords with Callas. I would rather have gone six rounds with Jack Dempsey.

When Callas carried a grudge, she planted it, nursed it, fostered it, watered it and watched it grow to sequoia size.

When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an opera singer like Maria Callas or a jazz singer like June Christy or Chris Connor, or approaching songs with the kind of mystical lethargy of Billie Holiday, or championing the downtrodden like Lotte Lenya. But I never dreamed of singing in a rock-and-roll band.

It didn't feel organic and [Tito] Gobbi was one of the artists that was able to, along with Maria Callas, incorporate not just the sound, but the emotion, the technique of the singing.

I was always a fan of the old-style comics. I loved vaudeville. I loved Milton Berle, Dick Shawn, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles, Charlie Callas, all those guys. Hilarious. I love the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies, and Abbott & Costello. My television influences were 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' 'Benny Hill,' and 'Hee Haw.'

I love to sing, and I warm up to Maria Callas.

The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing 'Tosca'.

The most widely criticised singers in the history of opera, Maria Callas and Franco Corelli, happen also to be the best singers. I am honoured for being part of their group.

Elvis Presley is my spiritual father, and as you may know Maria Callas is my spiritual mother.

It's a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it's a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand.

I would like to be Maria, but there is La Callas who demands that I carry myself with her dignity.