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Law and Opera pp 253–267Cite as

The Voice of the Opera Singer and Its Protection: Another Look at the Maria Callas Case

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Abstract

It is undeniable the identifying potential every human voice exhibits, especially concerning certain public figures and professionals, as occurs with renowned opera singers. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the protection granted to the voice, and its possible incardination within the personality rights, on the basis of the judgment in the case of the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris of 19 March 1982, in which the heirs of the internationally celebrated singer Maria Callas filed a claim for damages against the capture and reproduction of the singer’s voice without their consent.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    When most sopranos have a vocal range of two octaves, Maria Callas was capable of encompassing from Si3 to Fa6.

  2. 2.

    Álvarez Vázquez (2002), p. 24.

  3. 3.

    Montes Santiago (2015), p. 85, points out that she could have suffered a pulmonary embolism, which could never be proven because her body was incinerated.

  4. 4.

    Currently, in most cases ordering the return of the recordings would not be effective since it is so easy to make and keep copies, it would be impossible to prevent the one who did obtain them illegally from keeping one of the copies. Although Gobin (1983) classified the fact that the manager of the theater had to return the recordings of this “precious memory” as “severe punishment,” he underlined the possibility that said manager could have made a copy before handing the recording over.

  5. 5.

    This is how it is expressed in the comments on article 2:101 about compensable damages in The Principles of European Law: “The right to claim damages for a breach of the right to one’s own voice is becoming increasingly accepted.” Von Bar (2009), p. 340.

  6. 6.

    Gobin (1983), p. 19955.

  7. 7.

    Lindon (1983), p. 148. The cases commented which recognize the voice as an attribute of the personality are those of the actor Pieplu, Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris, 3 December 1975, D. 1977.211; and the television host León Zitrone, Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris, 11 July 1977, D. 1977.700.

  8. 8.

    Lindon (1983), p. 148.

  9. 9.

    De Cupis (1982).

  10. 10.

    García Rubio (2013), pp. 598–599.

  11. 11.

    Schierholz (1998), p. 187.

  12. 12.

    Blasco Gascó (2008), p. 38; Roselló Manzano (2011), p. 63 understands the voice as a prolongation of the image itself of a person.

  13. 13.

    In Azurmendi Adarraga’s opinion (1997), p. 42, in the case when the voice manages to represent the identity of the person consistently, it is due to—in addition to the voice—the intervention of the image and name.

  14. 14.

    O’Callaghan Muñoz (1991), p. 124.

  15. 15.

    Among others, STC 77/2009, 23 March (RTC 2009/77).

  16. 16.

    STC 117/1994, 25 April (RTC 1994/117).

  17. 17.

    Legal reasoning 2° -Decision of the Provincial Court of Barcelona, section 15, num. Appeal 534/2001, 10 September 2003.

  18. 18.

    Roselló Manzano (2011), p. 64.

  19. 19.

    European Commission, Opinion 3/2012 on developments in biometric technologies, 27 April 2012, p. 24.

  20. 20.

    Nowadays, it is completely admitted the elevated economic value which certain personality rights possess, such as image, intimacy, name or voice, especially when dealing with people with a public profile. García Rubio (2013), p. 616.

  21. 21.

    De Verda Beamonte (2007a), p. 276; Leiva Fernández (1990) was of the same opinion, pp. 845–854. German doctrine has also underlined that only those imitations are to be permitted which allow the public to distinguish that they are actually witnessing an imitation of the voice and not the real one. Schierholz (1998), p. 187.

  22. 22.

    Gómez Corona (2014), pp. 46–48.

  23. 23.

    Gómez Corona (2014), p. 47, mentioning the Constitutional Court’s Judgment 167/2013, 7 October. For Alegre Martínez (1997), p. 82, article 2 of the Organic Law 1/1982 seems to understand rights in article 18.1 Spanish Constitution in broader terms or at least more relative, meaning that the article is complemented by the principle favor libertatis, consistent in the necessarily extensive interpretation of the fundamental rights y the restrictive interpretation of their limits.

  24. 24.

    However, if the modifications in the recording are relative to intonation, sense or context of the subject recorded, we shall then be facing unlawful conduct if it is used without the holder’s consent. Alegre Martínez (1997), p. 87.

  25. 25.

    Pascual Medrano (2003), p. 62.

  26. 26.

    Von Bar (2009), p. 340.

  27. 27.

    Midler v. Ford Motor Co., 849 F. 2d. 460 (9th Cir. 1988). Klein (2014), pp. 583–594, studies the case. Also mentioned in Barbas (2015), pp. 205–206, when referring to the increase in right of publicity cases in the last few years.

  28. 28.

    Rothman (2002), p. 263.

  29. 29.

    Waits v. Frito Lay, Inc., No. 978 F.2d 1093, 9th Cir. 1992. Estudia el caso Klein (2014), pp. 583–594.

  30. 30.

    Klein (2014), pp. 583–594.

  31. 31.

    Von Bar (2009), p. 342.

  32. 32.

    For a comparative study, vid. Von Bar (2009), pp. 341–342.

  33. 33.

    García Rubio (2013), p. 622; Otero Crespo (2014), p. 1109.

  34. 34.

    García Rubio (2013), p. 623, in relation with the Supreme Court’s ruling 21 December 1994. The author sees no reason which might preclude the designation, on the part of the person responsible, of the people to whom she/he wishes to be her/his economic beneficiaries of that which the deceased’s attributes might generate once she/he were dead.

  35. 35.

    Supreme Court’s ruling, Civil Court, 20 June 2016, n° 414/2016. This contradicts what was established by German case law in the Marlene Dietrich case, where the Federal Supreme Court, in a ruling on 1 December 1999 AZ I ZR 49/97, I ZR 226/97, grants the heir damages compensation due to the post mortem breaching of the patrimonial content of the right to one’s image. For a more extensive review of the case, vid Palazón Garrido (2003), pp. 495–518; García Rubio (2013), pp. 617–618; Otero Crespo (2014), pp. 1122–1123.

  36. 36.

    The law concerning the rights of famous people in California, Section 3344.1, permits film industries and actors to sign the transfer of the rights of image, voice, etc., of the party concerned for a maximum of 70 years following her/his death. If there is no such contract, the deceased actor’s heirs are to be consulted for authorization if someone wishes to make use of her/his personal traits. The appearance of characters already deceased in films is becoming more and more frequent: the appearance of the deceased Paul Walker in “Fast and Furious,” Audrey Hepburn in a chocolate advertisement, or Peter Cushing in “Rogue One,” are only a few examples. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that there is already a technology that allows to “clone voices”: that a written text sounds the way a specific person would pronounce it, although one would need to first record 150 sentences by that person. So, the audiobook sector could include voices of actors or artists already dead. However, experts who have worked on projects of voice recognition and synthesis warn of the dangers of this in relation with disinformation. article in the newspaper El Pais, 4 mayo 2017. Accessible in: http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/05/03/opinion/1493823596_448495.html.

  37. 37.

    García Rubio (2013), p. 628. The author points out the problems that might crop up with the resolution of the recoverable damage. While for some legal systems the holder could only recover the license required for soliciting transfer of the right misappropriated, for others it would be possible to demand the restitution of the gains obtained by the offender.

  38. 38.

    Ley de propiedad intelectual (RDL 1/1996, 12 abril, BOE 22/04/1996).

  39. 39.

    De Verda Beamonte (2007b), p. 2.

  40. 40.

    Cabanillas Sánchez (2007), p. 1534.

  41. 41.

    Sánchez González (2014), p. 3085.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Faculty of Law, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Julia Ammerman Yebra

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Correspondence to Julia Ammerman Yebra .

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  1. Angelo Sraffa Department of Legal Studies, Bocconi Universtiy, Milan, Italy

    Filippo Annunziata

  2. Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Giorgio Fabio Colombo

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Ammerman Yebra, J. (2018). The Voice of the Opera Singer and Its Protection: Another Look at the Maria Callas Case. In: Annunziata, F., Colombo, G. (eds) Law and Opera. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68649-3_17

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