ON Friday, March 19, 1965, Maria Callas returned to the Metropolitan Opera after a seven-year absence. The work was Puccini’s “Tosca”; it was one of the most anticipated nights in Met history.

The next day Harold Schonberg reported in The New York Times that Callas’s first entrance had set off a wave of applause that stopped the performance for several minutes. There were 16 curtain calls at the end. In between she was thrilling. “Her conception of the role,” Schonberg wrote, “was electrical.”

If you’ve experienced enough performances and you’ve had any luck at all, you’re sure to have felt this kind of electricity.

Charisma, critics like to call it nowadays. In recent months I’ve referred in reviews in The Times to “the charismatic Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky,” “the charismatic Hélène Grimaud” and “the quietly charismatic folk singer and songwriter Sam Amidon.” I’ve called a pianist’s Allegro finale “sparklingly charismatic” and a countertenor “warmly charismatic.” Of a benefit concert for Japan I said that the closing rock and pop acts “featured a dazzling variety of charismatic frontwomen.”