Maria Callas

by Arianna Huffington

  It was Maria’s unbroken rule to speak to no one on the day of a performance unless it was about something connected with that night’s opera. But on November 6, 1958, she did not stop talking right up to the moment she had to go onstage. The whole day had been an electrifying performance. Mary Mead, who lived in Dallas and had become her close friend, remembers the day in every detail: “She started with a phone interview to Time, and she did not seem to hang up the phone once. How she could still talk, let alone sing, I don’t know.” That night Maria was Medea, singing out much of the fury she had not talked out during the day. She was not singing just for her adoring Texan public; she was singing for Bing, for New York, for all those celebrating her humiliation. And she was magnificent.

  1

  Evangelia, Maria, Jackie and George Callas, New York City, 1924. Maria’s parents changed their name from Kalogeropoulos when they decided to make America their permanent home.

  2

  If 13-year-old Maria was to have the great career her mother dreamed of, they would have to return to Greece for the right teachers and training.

  3

  Outside Athens home, 1939. Plump, clumsy and painfully shy at age 16, she nonetheless possessed a fierce will and unshakable resolution.

  4

  Elvira de Hidalgo had a clear sense of her pupil’s destiny.

  5

  With her father in New York City in 1945. Though he found opera boring, he took are of Maria and gave her a home.

  6

  Vocalizing in a Milan hotel room with her husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini. Confident of his love, Maria could accept his criticism without bridling.

  7

  Maria Meneghini Callas, 1949, Verona.

  8

  Antonio Ghiringhelli, manager of La Scala, took an instant dislike to Maria. He knew he could never control her, and the power she exuded unnerved him.

  9

  Maria’s official debut at La Scala in 1951 was in I Vespri Siciliani, with Boris Christoff (rear) and Enjo Mascherini. It was one of her greatest Italian triumphs.

  10

  She celebrated her 1954 American debut at a party in Chicago with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Walter Legge and other friends. Her triumphant success launched the Lyric Opera of Chicago into international orbit.

  11

  With Arturo Toscanini, Victor de Sabata, La Scala’s artistic director, and Luchino Visconti (back to camera), who mesmerized Maria with his genius and charisma.

  12

  13

  Rehearsing La Vestale with Visconti. At first she was fascinated, then in love.

  14

  At La Scala with Cesare Valletti, Visconti and Leonard Bernstein, discussing La Sonnambula. As Bernstein put it: “Callas? She was pure electricity.”

  15

  Before Visconti, her mentor was Tullio Serafin, who once said when she doubted her abilities: “I guarantee that you can.”

  16

  When served a summons from her former manager, Bagarozy, by a U.S. Marshal, barefoot Maria flew into a rage outside her dressing room at the Chicago Opera House, 1955.

  17

  Two days before her Met debut, a savage Time magazine cover story destroyed her public image, catapulting Maria into grief and rage that lasted weeks.

  18

  But the Voice was magic: 16 curtain calls at her Met debut as Norma, October 29, 1956.

  19

  In Edinburgh with opera partner Giuseppe di Stefano, August 1957. Maria was accused of canceling a fifth performance when she was only contracted to sing four.

  20

  On to Venice to a gala party given in her honor by her new friend and champion, Elsa Maxwell, with whom she sang duets.

  21

  At the party she met Aristotle Onassis, who pursued her all over Venice—from the Lido to Harry’s Bar.

  22

  Losing her voice, in Rome Maria refused to finish a gala performance of Norma attended by the Italian President.

  23

  She tried to explain herself to journalists, but the press was outraged: “Scandalo!” “Disgrazia!” “Insulta!”

  24

  At the Met in February of 1958 she was lauded by General Manager Rudolf Bing.

  25

  With Zeffirelli in Dallas, preparing the death scene from La Traviata in October of 1958. She amazed everyone with her dedication, her stamina, her passion for work.

  26

  The day before the Dallas Medea, she received a cable from Bing firing her. She called it “Prussian tactics.”

  27

  Maria cut short her 1959 Dallas season, tearfully bid her friend Lawrencc Kelly goodbye, and returned to Italy to divorce Meneghini.

  28

  After courtroom hearings in Brescia, Italy, November 14, 1959, the marriage was over.

  29

  30

  The catalyst was Onassis, who was openly pursuing her: “ . . . how could I help but be flattered if a woman with the class of Maria Callas fell in love with someone like me?”

  31

  Ari introduced her to world figures, friends like Winston Churchill, and opened up a fairy-tale life on the Christina. With Aristo, thew was for the first time a really powerful counterattraction to her art.

  32

  Back in New York to rehearse for a concert version of Il Pirata at Carnegie Hall in 1959. Barred in a single year from Rome, La Scala, and the Met, Maria no longer found music a consuming passion. Now there was Ari.

  33

  Maria finally returned to La Scala after a much-publicized 30-month absence, and opening night was spectacular. She waved to Ari and his guests Prince Rainier and Princess Grace at the curtain call.

  34

  Maria’s mother took a job selling jewelry for Jolie Gabor and made certain everyone knew about it.

  35

  Vacationing on the Christina, Maria shopped with Tina Onassis at Portofino. She was now hopelessly in love with Aristo.

  36

  Madame Biki, dressmaker and old friend, choosing evening dresses, before Maria’s Paris debut as Norma. Maria wished she could be nursing a baby with Aristo by her side, not preparing for her first full opera in Paris. “Onassis destroyed her life,” Biki said years later.

  37

  Met farewell as Tosca: March 1965.

  38

  “ . . . When I met Aristo, so full of life, I became a different woman.” In Ibiza.

  39

  At the Paris Lido. He brought love, frivolity, passion and tenderness to the life of a dedicated nun who had begun to lose the taste for her vocation.

  40

  41

  Nowhere does Maria seem so happy, so contented, as on the deck of the Christina.

  42

  Waving from the motor launch to the local people.

  43

  Ari’s sister, Count Theo Rossi di Montelera, Maria, and Ari’s son, Alexander, on the Christina. Ari backed out of marriage to Maria on the grounds that it would cause his children emotional upheaval.

  44

  Ari was a man tipsy with the smell of fame and drunk at the prospect of more of it.

  45

  The night of Ari’s wedding to Jackie, Maria was the center of attention at a party to celebrate Maxim’s 75th anniversary.

  46

  October 20, 1968, Skorpios.

  47

  Hélène Rochas, an old friend, at the reunion dinner party for Maria and Ari after the wedding.

  48

  As he once again became a regular feature of her life . . .

  49

  . . . forgiving him came more easily.

  50

  Pasolini could see the drama in Maria’s life reflected in the drama of Medea.

  51

  Maria’s love sustained Ari in his grief over the loss of his only son, Alexander. Christina openly bemoaned her role in having alienated Ari from Maria.

  52

  Her godfather, Leonidas Lantzounis, provided the fami
ly warmth and love she always longed for. For 27 years, she wrote her most revealing letters to him.

  53

  After the succès d’estime of Medea, her life was made up of ceremony and protocol, like the opening of a new opera season with her friend Wally Toscanini.

  54

  At a master class at Juilliard in 1972, Maria said of performing music: “You must make love to it.”

  55

  The future seemed barren until di Stefano briefly came back into her life as concert—and romantic—partner.

  56

  The audience thronged to the stage to throw her flowers, everyone’s eyes moist with emotion. As for Ari, he had begun divorce proceedings against Jackie.

  57

  Ari’s death struck her an almost mortal blow. Totally isolated, she prepared her will, waiting for the lightning to strike.

  58

  Maria’s funeral, September 20, 1977, the Greek Orthodox church on Rue Georges Bizet.

  59

  Mother and sister, Jackie, after the settlement of Maria’s $12-million estate plus future record royalties. Mother and Meneghini divided the fortune.

  60

  The Greek Minister of Culture [Nianias] scattered Maria’s ashes over the Aegean Sea, following her wishes: “I want to be burned. I don’t want to become a worm.”

  Nor did it end with the performance. Maria Seconda (the name Maria had given to Mary Mead) was giving a supper party for her, and when Maria arrived at one o’clock in the morning, a huge television truck was parked in the front yard, and the phone was still ringing. She left Mary Mead’s house at five o’clock in the morning, and after a few hours’ sleep Dallas’ prima donna assoluta began talking again to the American press, to the Italian press, to anyone who would listen—and everybody did. “I cannot switch my voices. My voice is not like an elevator going up and down. . . . So Mr. Bing cancels a twenty-six-performance contract for three Traviatas.” “When I think of those lousy Traviatas he made me sing without rehearsals, without even knowing my partners. . . . Is that Art? . . . And other times, all those performances with a different tenor or a different baritone every time. . . . Is that Art?”

  Bing had not exactly remained speechless. “I do not propose,” began his press statement, “to 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.” Sarcasm, formal eloquence and sardonic wit were only a few of the weapons in Rudolf Bing’s arsenal. He used them all. Maria had taken on a formidable antagonist—a man who thrived on public fencing, a man who early in his career had perfected the art of dealing with awkward customers at Peter Jones’s hairdressing salon, and who toward the end had informed the French press, busy complaining about the performance of a Met singer, that “Miss Peters may have had a bad night but the Paris Opera has had a bad century.”

  “Although Madame Callas’s artistic qualifications are a matter of violent controversy between her friends and foes,” continued Bing’s statement, “her reputation for projecting her undisputed histrionic talent into her business affairs is a matter of common knowledge . . . ” He went on in this vein until Maria began to feel grateful for Ghiringhelli’s dismissive one-sentence statements to the press in their feuding days at La Scala. “So, on with the season!” were Bing’s final, fighting words.

  Maria continued her concert tour of America from Cleveland to Detroit, from Detroit to Washington, from Washington to San Francisco and Los Angeles; concerts punctuated by an Elsa Maxwell dinner in New York in honor of Karajan, a dinner at the Waldorf with Aly Khan and Noel Coward and a dinner in Washington given in her honor by the French ambassador. Meanwhile the Met controversy smoldered on. It ranged from avowals of total support for Bing’s action to demands for his resignation. Whatever the results of the theoretical argument over Bing’s decision, back in Milan at the beginning of December, Maria was feeling its practical effects. She celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday looking ahead to a winter almost devoid of performances. Almost, but not quite. On December 19, she was at last due to make her debut in Paris. It was a charity gala concert, with the proceeds going to the Légion d’Honneur. The seats were being sold for the highest price ever charged at L’Opéra, and the list of those who were going to be present included Charlie Chaplin, Brigitte Bardot, Emile de Rothschild, Juliette Greco, Françoise Sagan, the Windsors, Jean Cocteau and Aristotle Onassis. Even the twenty-four usherettes were part of Parisian high society, selling programs in their ball gowns to raise money for the legion.

  Among the flowers Maria received in her hotel on the morning of the gala was a huge bunch of red roses; the good wishes were in Greek and the signature, Aristotle Onassis. Among the flowers that arrived at lunchtime was a huge bunch of red roses—the good wishes were again in Greek and the signature, Aristotle. And in the evening, just as she was about to leave for the opera house, an identical bunch arrived with the good wishes in Greek and no signature. “How romantic he is!” was Maria’s only comment to her husband. Later Meneghini remembered—or imagined—that there was a strange tone in her voice as she said that.

  The concert was to be followed by a sumptuous supper for 450 guests, and the press was full of the event for days before. “L’impératrice du bel canto,” as one French paper called her, was reminded on her arrival that when she had passed through Paris at the beginning of the year, she had told the French that if she lived among them, she would never be angry again. “Yes,” repeated Maria at a press conference in her hotel suite, “only the French have sought to understand me.”

  On the night of the performance, an Italian paper took a straw poll among the crowd gathered outside the opera house. “Why are you here?” the reporter asked. “To hear Callas,” was one answer. “We hope there will be a scandal,” was another.

  But there was no scandal, only a triumph. Maria sang arias from Norma, Il Trovatore and Il Barbiere, as well as the whole of Act II of Tosca, with Tito Gobbi and Albert Lance. The evening was televised in nine countries, so that Maria’s triumph and the delirious ovation she received reverberated beyond the French capital throughout Europe. At the supper afterward she looked glorious. Wearing a diamond necklace worth more than a million dollars (lent to her by Van Cleef & Arpels), and radiating confidence, she gracefully accepted congratulations from a long line of enthusiastic admirers. Aristotle Onassis was among the first. Stocky, black-haired and olive-skinned, he looked like a Greek peasant, and yet in his dinner jacket he radiated a natural elegance many might have envied.

  It was as if everyone present that night had one wish, one desire only, to honor Maria. Her affection for the French had been more than fully matched by their devotion to her. She may have been barred in the course of one year from Rome, La Scala and the Met, but before the year was out she had discovered another kingdom and taken it by storm.

  At least this is how it looked at the beginning of 1959, but it would soon be obvious that another kind of conquest was now consuming her. First, however, she crossed the Atlantic again for two concerts—one in St. Louis and one in Philadelphia—organized once more by Sol Hurok. Then on January 27, 1959, came her first appearance at Carnegie Hall in a concert performance of Il Pirata under the auspices of the American Opera Society. The following morning the many reviews included one which gave thanks to Rudolf Bing for having left a gap in Maria’s engagement book that allowed her to accept the invitation to sing in Pirata. She had worn a long white gown and her only props were a thirteen-foot red silk stole and, of course, her hands, her eyes, her movements and her magnetism. “As the other soloists filed out for the seventeen-minute final scene,” wrote Louis Biancolli, “all the lights but those over the exits and the musicians’ desks suddenly went out. Slowly Miss Callas rose, drew close her red stole, and an eerie glow fell on her face. At that ghostly juncture Miss Callas made the most of her strange and haunting timbres. It was something to be left in the dark with the voice of Maria Meneghini Callas.
” Suddenly a concert version had become infinitely more dramatic than the average full-scale operatic performance.

  The next day, Maria, banned from America’s foremost opera house, was honored by the city in which it stood, and in which she was born. The citation, presented by Robert Wagner, then New York’s mayor, was “to the esteemed daughter of New York, whose glorious voice and superb artistry have contributed to the pleasure of music lovers everywhere.” A few days later, by which time Maria was back in Milan, Leonie Rysanek was making her debut at the Metropolitan as Lady Macbeth in the production designed for Maria—the most expensive the Met had mounted up to that time. Leonard Warren, the Met’s great baritone, was Macbeth, but disappointment was hovering over the auditorium even before the curtain went up. The audience could hardly be prevented from making imaginary comparisons. Bing, who had forseen this, had hired a claqueur to shout “Bravo Callas!” into the auditorium at the moment of Rysanek’s entrance. His aim was to neutralize some of the heavily partisan Callas feeling in the audience by triggering the American love for the underdog. And so as not to throw Rysanek off her stride, he had briefed the claqueur to station himself at an angle which would minimize the chances of her hearing him. Considering the impossible task she had undertaken, Leonie Rysanek did very well, but the sense of disappointment at Maria’s absence could still be felt in the auditorium as the first-night audience was filing out.