Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (10 page)

Everyone who was present during those rehearsals remembers Maria’s Turandot to this day: at the age of twenty-three she had managed to capture both the imperious coldness and cruelty of the Oriental Princess and the fire and sensuality that are burning underneath. On the surface, Maria’s potential for eroticism seemed so faint and tenuous that Louise had argued vigorously against her husband’s choice of
Turandot
as the vehicle for revealing Maria to an astonished world. But Eddie, who had from the beginning been fascinated—too fascinated for Louise’s liking—by Maria’s complex personality, had sensed that the womanliness and the passion were all there underneath the ice of Princess Turandot and the drabness of the young Maria.

The American public was not meant to be astonished—at least, however, not yet. Without warning, the American Chorus Singers’ Union came up with a demand for a deposit, to guarantee payment to the members of the chorus, that Bagarozy simply could not meet. He tried to raise the money. The opening date that had been announced and advertised everywhere for January 6 was postponed for a week, for two weeks, then until January 27. The enterprise that had started with such an impetuous rush suddenly began to lose momentum. The union hierarchy was impervious to Bagarozy’s charms and the angels began to lose faith. The demoralization spread even faster than the excitement Bagarozy had managed to generate, until he had no option left but to declare bankruptcy both for the enterprise and for himself. The Chicago Opera House organized a benefit concert to raise funds for the artists’ return journey, and Eddie began selling everything he had—his car, his wife’s jewels, his house on Long Island—to pay some of his debts.

Maria was adrift once again. Objectively she was back where she started; psychologically it was much worse. Recognition was snatched from her on the brink of success. Even her mock-Chinese costumes were taken away from her. But her instinct for survival, her deep, almost mystic, patience, carried her through. Also, being near Eddie made the collapse much easier to take. Sunk beneath demands from creditors, process servers, singers and musicians, he was still able to convince those around him that he was the guardian of some prodigious treasure.

On February 6, 1947, Maria returned to New York with Nicola Rossi-Lemeni. The first morning back found her at her usual hour at the Bagarozys’ apartment going over parts with Louise; the United States Opera Company and Puccini’s
Turandot
belonged to the past. Maria was looking ahead to the future, waiting for the lightning to strike. And it did. Giovanni Zenatello, the famous tenor who was now artistic director of the Verona Festival, was in New York looking for a soprano for the title role of Ponchielli’s
Gioconda
. He was vacillating over the choice between Zinka Milanov and Herva Nelli, but Rossi-Lemeni, who had already signed a contract to sing at his festival the following year, convinced him that he should not make up his mind until he had heard Maria. Maria arrived with Louise for her audition at Zenatello’s apartment on Central Park West.

With Louise at the piano she sang the aria “
Suicidio
” from
La Gioconda
. She had hardly begun singing when Zenatello, unable to contain his excitement at what he was hearing, rushed to the piano, turned the pages of the score to the passionate duet between Enzo and Gioconda, and despite his seventy years, he began singing it with Maria with a passion and intensity he had forgotten he possessed. The offer to sing Gioconda at the Verona Festival was almost an anticlimax after what Zenatello described as “not so much an audition as a revelation.”

Maria started getting ready for her journey to Verona with the excitement of a young girl preparing for her wedding. Both Evangelia, who worshiped “the done thing,” and Maria, who to a very large extent shared her mother’s creed, wanted Maria to arrive in Verona with a complete trousseau of dresses, shoes and handbags, so that she could conquer Europe offstage as well as on. But the combined funds made available to them by father and godfather only produced two suits and one dress—all in the straitjacketed style that mother and daughter regarded as appropriately restrained elegance and which for many years was the hallmark of Maria’s taste. The minitrousseau ready, Evangelia set herself the task of drawing a list of “thirteen points” of advice for her daughter, which included the reminder that life was full of disappointments and ended with God’s commandment: “Honour thy father and thy mother.”

All was ready except for one thing: the signing of the contract between Maria Callas and Edward Richard Bagarozy. He was to become Maria’s “sole and exclusive personal agent for a period of ten years,” for which “the said Personal Representative” was to be paid, “the sum equivalent to ten per cent of all gross fees earned by her in Opera, Concerts, Radio, Recordings and Television, said fee becoming due and payable upon receipt of money earned by Artist.” In return for this, Bagarozy agreed “to use his best efforts to further and promote the Artist’s career.” Maria should have been bound to the Bagarozys by sentiment and gratitude, but something in her would not let her sign the contract. Finally on June 13, 1947, the day of her departure, unable to think up a convincing, logical reason why she should not sign it and not prepared on this occasion to follow her instinct, she signed—an action that would later trigger one of the most unpleasant episodes in her life.

As she was kissing Eddie and her mother good-bye on the quay, Maria seemed strangely withdrawn. An awareness of obligation very rarely engenders affection, and Maria longed, more than anything, for a completely fresh, uncluttered start. On June 27, 1947, the S.S.
Rossia
dropped anchor in the Bay of Naples, with Maria Callas and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, two of the main forthcoming attractions at the Verona Arena, on board. Eighteen months later than de Hidalgo would have wished, Maria had arrived in Italy. Geographically it made little sense to go from Greece to Italy via the United States, but many times during her life Maria was to prove that what seemed like diversions turned out to speed her on her way. The longest way around was often the quickest way home.

5

T
HE RAILWAY STATION IN
V
ERONA
is not far from the Hotel Accademia, but for Maria it could not have been too close. The journey from Naples had been almost as exhausting as the thirteen days on the
Rossia
. The train was so crowded that Nicola, Maria and Louise Caselotti, who was traveling with them, had to take turns sitting on one seat. The heat was stifling, and when she was not sitting down, Maria spent most of the time standing next to an open window, catching the breeze. But a few hours rest at the hotel were more than enough to revive her excitement about
Gioconda
, Verona and the future.

The excitement, however, was mixed with anxiety and fear as Maria was getting into one of her two suits to meet—or rather face—Gaetano Pomari, a representative of the Verona Arena, and Giuseppe Gambato, a representative of the city. They were to come by the hotel to take her to dinner; Nicola Rossi-Lemeni and an opera-loving Verona industrialist, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, were going to join them. When they arrived at the Pedavena Restaurant, Meneghini was already there, surrounded by a few more city dignitaries. All Maria’s insecurities came instantly to the surface, and she spent most of the dinner in silence, by turns dutiful and withdrawn. Yet she was clearly being treated with the deference that was the artist’s due. The director of the festival, who had burst into song with his new Gioconda during her audition in New York, had made the rounds of Verona describing Maria’s voice, the story growing more dramatic with each retelling.

Meneghini’s interest in the artist was intensified by his fascination with the woman. “Battista is our local Romeo,” said Signor Pomari to tease him. Verona’s current Romeo was a short, wiry man in his early fifties, head of the family building business, an acknowledged bon viveur and a dedicated ladies’ man. In provincial Verona, it did not take much to acquire an aura of culture or of worldliness, but, after wartime Athens and lower-middle-class New York, Maria felt and behaved as though she had reached a pinnacle of sophistication. “I knew he was
it
five minutes after I first met him,” said Maria some years later, looking back on that first meeting. Perhaps; but what is certain is that she felt warmer, less afraid, more secure and more alive as a result of his presence at the table. Lovers had played no role at all in her life, and even her daydreams were not of handsome princes, but of first nights, singing feats and operatic triumphs. There is nothing to suggest that up until that time any man had inspired her with the slightest erotic excitement, nor is there any indication that Battista Meneghini did either.

Yet she liked him. She liked his stability, she liked the way everyone deferred to him, and above all she liked the way he liked her. She was the focus of his attention. Whether because of the reports about the mysterious powers of her voice, an intuitive sense of her greatness or perhaps a bit of both, Meneghini was behaving that night as though he was in the presence of genius—for Maria always a lovable trait. At the same time, unlike many others, he seemed not only aware that the bearer of the genius was a woman, but positively pleased that this was the case. Meneghini had been assigned by the festival to be the official escort of the visiting prima donna, and before the dinner was over he was determined to see a great deal of her in the course of his “duties.” And he did—starting the following morning with a day trip to Venice. Maria, who had not been pursued by many men, found herself for the first time continually flattered by a man who seemed to understand the art of making himself at first agreeable, then gradually indispensable to her.

They began exploring Verona and the surrounding countryside. Maria was discovering Italy and at the same time the pleasures of being courted and admired for herself and not just for her voice. And she was enjoying the second discovery even more than the first. In the middle of July she started rehearsing with Tullio Serafin, who had just arrived in the city—and the second gentleman of Verona quickly overshadowed the first. The joys of intimacy took second place to the passion for music, work, success and the discovery of working with Serafin. “It was maybe the main lucky thing that happened to me,” said Maria later. “He taught me that in everything there must be an expression, there must be a justification, he taught me exactly the depth of music. . . . I really, really drank all I could from this man.”

Serafin loved Verona and Verona loved Serafin. His bond with the city went back to 1913 when he had conducted the first performance at the Verona Arena. Since then he had become one of the most famous conductors in the world, his engagements taking him from the Rome Opera to the Met and from the Met to La Scala. During those thirty-four years he had worked with the greatest singers of the day and had molded the career and direction of Rosa Ponselle, who sang her first Norma at the Met in 1925 after eighteen months of working with the maestro. His influence on Maria’s musical outlook and direction was to be even greater. De Hidalgo had pointed her toward the bel canto repertory; Serafin led her to it and provided her with all the opportunities to master it onstage. “As soon as I heard her sing,” he said, “I recognized an exceptional voice. A few notes were still uncertainly placed but I immediately knew that here was a future great singer.” And that knowledge, which was unmistakably communicated to Maria, fortified her, gave her confidence and made the rehearsal period leading up to the opening night less of a torment and more of a delight than any other intensive working period had been.

As the summer progressed, so did her interest in Meneghini. If Serafin was from the beginning her mentor, guide and inspiration, Meneghini was her gentle and serviceable critic. Sure of his devotion, she felt totally unthreatened; she could let herself go and accept his, in any case, constructive criticisms without bridling.

Maria could not remember ever having been happier, and yet, as she wrote to her mother, she was “tembling like a leaf” at the prospect of her first night at the huge Arena, singing in front of an audience of 25,000 Italians, all of whom regarded themselves as operatic experts. During the dress rehearsal, growing anxiety and overenthusiastic acting caused her to fall on the rocky stage of the Arena and sprain an ankle. She spent a painful and anxious night in her hotel room, with Meneghini sitting the whole night at her bedside, nursing her back to health and confidence. Ten years later, just before Onassis came into her life and her marriage came to an end, Maria remembered that time with gratitude and the kind of exaggeration that she often used to hide her growing doubts: “This was just one little episode that revealed my husband’s character. I would give my life for him immediately and joyfully. From that moment on I understood that I could never find a more generous man. . . . If Battista had wanted, I would have abandoned my career without regret, because in a woman’s life love is more important than artistic triumphs.”

That was, of course, after the artistic triumphs had been achieved. On August 3, 1947, as Maria was waiting in the wings for her Italian debut, there was no room for anything except the prospect of the artistic triumph ahead. It was not to be. She hobbled around with a bandaged leg, self-conscious and suddenly unsure of the enormous stage. The reviewers praised “the vibrant quality and easy production of her high notes” and “the timbre of a most moving and individual quality,” but this was hardly the praise from which artistic triumphs are made. There was not even the offer of a return visit to Verona. Yet Maria, drawing heavily on Serafin’s trust and Meneghini’s devotion, sang the remaining five
Giocondas
and then stayed in Verona confidently waiting for the next big opportunity.

Maria, who had said no even when she could not afford it, could now, thanks to the fact that Meneghini had become her unofficial sponsor, be selective without hardship. So the first offer—an invitation to sing
Gioconda
in Vigevano, near Milan—was turned down. The prospect of an interview at La Scala was looming up and Maria trusted the future enough to say no to this run-of-the-mill production in an unimportant town. But the immediate future turned out to be bleaker than Maria and her protector had expected. Mario Labroca, assistant director of La Scala, heard Maria sing and muttered something about vocal defects and something else about the possibility of her taking part in La Scala’s forthcoming production of
Un Ballo in Maschera
, but a week went by and no more mutterings were heard.