Feeling the Feelings of Others
through the Voice of a Singer

Process Theology and Maria Callas
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By CBS Television - eBayfrontback, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37848669

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​Maria Callas
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​The Open and Relational Voice
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It would not be true to say that Maria Callas (1923-1977) had an open and relational personality. She was, for many, very hard to get along with. She was a diva, after all. But it is true to say that when we hear her singing, she has an open and relational voice. You can feel her voice, such that the emotions she is communicating get under your skin and enter your heart. You feel her voice, to be sure, and you also feel the feelings of the characters she is performing: their longings, their passions, their sufferings, their loves. For the moment, as you listen, they become part of you; your capacities for empathy are expanded. And so it is true for many artists. Their talents communicate truths of the heart even as their personalities may fall short of certain virtues we admire. It said that God is a fellow sufferer who understands the human condition. The voice of Maria Callas helps us participate in the divine life.

- Jay McDaniel

​Rhiannon Giddens, musician

Her voice. Her spirit. Her total commitment to the emotion written into the score. The passion conjured by her understanding of the personality represented by so many words and notes. These are among the many reasons she was admired, adored and idolized. She found the crossroads that every opera singer strives for, where skill, technique and know-how intersect with complete surrender to the needs of the character; she leaves us breathless, every time. To listen to old recordings of Maria Callas is to feel, in the gut, that old superstition that a recording could steal your soul. Her soul floats out to us, note after exquisite note.

- NY Times, Oct. 6, 2021, Five Minutes That Will Make You Love Maria Callas

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Latonia Moore, soprano​
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​To me, a great singer is one who can make me feel her voice — a palpable sound that gets under my skin. Maria Callas does that for me. She is the kind of singer that can take you through the gamut of human emotion and back. She does it in everything she sings, but for some reason her “Casta diva” goes beyond. It’s spiritual. It stops time. It makes me forget all my worries. It’ll heal you, if you let it.

- NY Times, Oct. 6, 2021, Five Minutes That Will Make You Love Maria Callas

Five Minutes That Will
Make You Love Maria Callas

​NY Times
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Process Theology and Maria Callas

feeling the feelings of others
through the voice of a singer

"To me, a great singer is one who can make me feel her voice—a palpable sound that penetrates my skin and touches my heart. Maria Callas does that for me," thus we hear from the soprano, Latonia Moore.

​I think she's right. It is one thing to hear someone sing; I myself am a singer. But it's another thing to feel the voice of the singer in a way that it penetrates your skin and touches your heart. For many, Maria Callas, a defining opera diva of the 20th century, is this kind of singer. You feel her voice, and through her voice, you enter 'the gamut of human emotion and back.'

There is a therapeutic value in this. As Moore points out, 'It'll heal you if you let it.' Her voice becomes your therapist, your counselor, your soul friend. The healing is solitary in some ways; it occurs inside you, in the privacy of your developing heart. But it is also relational. As Rhiannon Giddens puts it, 'Her soul floats out to us, note after exquisite note.' You make contact with Maria Callas through her singing, and with the character who inhabits her voice. Whose feelings are heard? Is it those of Callas or those of the character whose emotions she is singing about? It doesn't matter.

Is there a theology in this? Yes, there is. At least there is a process-relational theology. In process theology, feelings are the very building blocks of life, and music is what feelings sound like. What we call energy in the physical world is itself a form of feeling, even at the microscopic level. Even atoms feel their surroundings. This is what we call 'causation.' In human life, feelings are likewise the building blocks of life: thinking is a form of feeling and thus forms of connection. Loving is a form of feeling, hoping is a form of feeling, anger is a form of feeling, hatred is a form of feeling, longing is a form of feeling. Feelings (prehensions) are the way that we humans are connected to the worlds around us and to ourselves.

Even the mystery at the heart of the universe, even the open and relational One in whose life the universe unfolds, is made of feelings, of prehensions. Process-relational theologians suggest that God 'feels the feelings' of each and all continuously, with tender care to ensure nothing is lost. If this is true, then those who help us 'feel the feelings' of others are priests and priestesses in their own way. Maria Callas is such a priest or priestess for many. Other singers, too, may function in this way. The impact of a singer and her voice depends as much on the context of the listener as it does on the voice of the singer.

Still, it is the communication of feeling through singing that is important. Connections are made. Moments of beauty arise. And this is what God is about: moments of connection, moments of beauty, soulful and, in this case, sonic.

Maria Callas was known to be temperamental, hard to get along with, self-absorbed, jealous, but also kind in her way. So be it. People do not have to be perfect in order to be conduits for the loving One. 

​I am also told that Maria Callas was not particularly religious. This doesn't matter either. The healing spirit of the universe can work through people's voices even if the people are not yet whole in the ways others, and perhaps they themselves, desire. Process theology suggests that beauty is a combination of harmony and intensity, but that sometimes intensity can override harmony. The coalescence of the two is the work of a lifetime, or more.

We may or may not believe in God. We may or may not be religious. Still, we feel the feelings of others and are thus connected with ourselves and the rest of life. It is her voice, and its palpable presence in our hearts, such that we feel connected, that is important.

​- Jay McDaniel

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