Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (16 page)

The stage for open hostilities was set, and the opportunity was provided by a benefit concert at the Teatro Municipal in Rio on September 14. Both Renata and Maria were there to take part in it, Maria to sing “Sempre libera” from
Traviata
, Renata to sing the “Ave Maria” from
Otello
. Maria sang, took her curtain calls and withdrew. Renata, carried away by the tumultuous applause she received, gave not one but two encores. There had been no previous agreement regarding encores, so Renata justified them as a response to the audience’s enthusiasm. Maria knew better. Harsh, angry words were exchanged backstage and diplomatic relations were broken off. But it was not easy to sever relations when they had to go on working closely together. Maria and Renata had plenty of opportunities, both professional and social, to test their tempers. Sometimes they managed to keep them, but more often they failed. A few days before Maria was due to sing
Tosca
they rather spectacularly failed when an after-dinnner discussion threatened to turn into a fishwives’ brawl.

Despite all her success, Maria still saw herself as snatching victory from hostile elements, and found her imagination increasingly peopled by enemies. At this time Renata led the parade, but soon she would be supplanted in Maria’s Enemies List by someone else. At the end of the opening night of
Tosca
in Rio, Meneghini burst into her dressing room with rumors that an anti-Callas plan was afoot at the opera house. Admittedly he was rather given to arriving in her dressing room with news of this kind, but on this occasion he was followed a few moments later by a messenger from the director of the opera house, asking her to come to his office. She went, determined to raise hell and ready with all the complaints that she had about inadequate rehearsal facilities and the rumors that were circulating. Before she could open her mouth she was formally informed by Barreto Pinto, the director, that due to what he described as the extremely unfavorable reactions of the audience to her Tosca, her contract was terminated. Whether it was through luck, her instinct for survival or a sudden aptitude for diplomacy, Maria remained perfectly cool until Pinto had finished. Then in a very businesslike manner, she reminded him of his contractual obligations. She insisted on being paid for the second
Tosca
that he would not allow her to sing and on singing the two remaining
Traviatas
. Pinto was furious but he had no option but to concede.

Maria’s replacement in
Tosca
was none other than Tebaldi. Maria was convinced that fate and coincidence had nothing to do with it; she openly accused Renata of having been behind Pinto’s decision to sack her. She was hurt, and made her accusation on suspicion rather than on evidence. The evidence, as far as it goes, tends to exonerate Tebaldi, but by that stage Maria was too distraught to be much concerned with evidence or even truth.
Traviata
was a huge success, but there was already open war between Pinto and Maria. He was so totally in the grip of his petty, unaccountable hatred for her that when she walked into his office to receive her fee before leaving, he jeered at her: “So you want money on top of glory, eh?” At this point the anger that had been coiled within Maria for the past few weeks could no longer be contained. Beside herself with fury, she seized the inkstand from Pinto’s desk and was about to fling it at him when a secretary rushed forward and snatched it from her hand. There was no bloodshed and no one was hurt, but by the time word of the incident had gone the rounds of the international opera houses, Maria might as well have stabbed Pinto with Tosca’s dagger.

All these explosions, conflicts and increasingly public personal dramas were abetted throughout the traumatic South American trip by a chorus of one: Battista Meneghini. Occasionally when Maria raged he pacified her, when she sulked he rallied her, but more often he inflamed her anger and resentment. Titta may have thought his intentions were unimpeachable, but there was plenty of malice seeking an outlet underneath his rather bland exterior. His wife’s enemies, real or imagined, were the nearest channels. His total identification with Maria’s professional interests at least saved her from being on the receiving end of his ill-nature—so long as she continued to put her career first. Meneghini was a born manager, and for the time being what Maria wanted was to be efficiently managed. And that she was. No opportunity to advance her career was lost.

On their way back to Italy, Battista had arranged for them to stop at Idlewild Airport so they could talk with Dario Soria, head of Cetra Records in New York, about the possibilities of a long-term contract. Maria was still on trial in America, but from reports that had reached him and from the few recordings that he had heard, Soria already knew that Cetra needed Maria more than Maria needed Cetra. During their airport talk, with Maria at her most professional, confident and businesslike, he was more convinced than ever. The contract with Cetra, stipulating the recording of three complete operas in 1952, was soon signed.

Maria returned to Italy, but South America, and especially Rio, was still very much with her. The tour had been a psychologically charged sequence of events of an emotional intensity far beyond its intrinsic importance. She longed to command her mind to forget Rio, but how does one command the mind to be still? The memories rankled, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, and there were moments of acute anguish as 1951 neared its end and Maria was about to enter her year of marvels—a year in which she was to ride with a tide of unparalleled success.

7

M
ARIA
’
S TWENTY-EIGHTH BIRTH
-day found her at the Grand Hotel in Milan, where Verdi lived for years and where he died. On the Via San Raffaele, a few minutes’ walk from La Scala, the Grand Hotel became Maria’s home in Milan. The official opening of La Scala was on December 7, a few days after Maria’s birthday; and Ghiringhelli was determined that La Scala’s production of
I Vespri Siciliani
would ensure that the Florence production of the summer before was instantly forgotten. The opera had not been heard at La Scala since 1908, and everything had been done to ensure that the Milanese felt it had been worth reviving. Victor de Sabata, La Scala’s artistic director, was conducting, an excellent cast had been assembled, headed by Maria and Boris Christoff, and for once they all had ample rehearsal time. At rehearsals Maria was the wholly absorbed artist, and if sometimes she was as much absorbed in her own artistry as in the composer’s music, the
Vespers
fared none the worse for it. Everyone was impressed by her professionalism, overwhelmed by her dedication and stunned by her range. “My God,” recalled a member of the chorus, “she came onstage sounding like our deepest contralto, Cloe Elmo. Before the evening was over, she took a high E-flat, and it was twice as strong as Toti Dal Monte’s!”

Maria herself had to make an effort not to be overwhelmed by the occasion; but it was not easy. She was surrounded by people for whom grand opera was a religion, Milan its Holy City and an opening night at La Scala the most sacred festival in the calendar. Many of the faithful were swollen with proprietorial pride, even though for most of them their only connection with La Scala was that they lived in the same city. But opera was their life, and legend had it that if ever a luckless singer failed to strike a top note, the gallery would join in by chanting the whole aria as it should have been sung. By 1951, they may not have been able to sing the aria correctly, but they were perfectly capable of whistling the sinner offstage, especially if he or she was a foreigner. Music making was a holy business and meddling with it was rarely welcomed. Stendhal had summed up this attitude over a century earlier: “No truly honest observer, venturing into Italy from abroad, could dare for one instant to deny the hopeless absurdity of presuming to train singers or compose elsewhere than under the shadow of Vesuvius.” Very little had changed by Maria’s time.

The glittering first-night audience was cautiously expectant. Maria’s fame had preceded her, but it was a chrysalid fame. The Scala audience knew it was up to them to turn it into an internationally radiant butterfly. At the end of the first night, Maria knew that La Scala had surrendered—but not quite, not with the completeness that would reverberate around the world. If the surrender was not total, still the applause which burst forth at the end of the bolero opening the last act was an indication of the enthusiasm that Maria had stirred among the Milanese. The critical reaction summed up in
Corriere della Sera
clearly echoed that enthusiasm: “The miraculous throat of Maria Meneghini Callas . . . the prodigious extension of her tones, their phosphorescent beauty and her technical agility which is more than rare, it is unique.”

I Vespri
was followed by
I Puritani
at the Teatro Comunale in Florence, and by more critical superlatives. But more moving and important for Maria than reading adulatory words in cold print the morning after was the live adulation of her audiences on the night. At the end of
Puritani
they shouted, stamped and clamored for her in curtain call after curtain call. And the orchestra, despite the legendary indifference of orchestras to singers of all kinds, stood in the pit applauding with at least as much passion as the audience. Soon these demonstrations became the talk of the Italian musical world: “Not since Toscanini . . . ,” whispered the lay connoisseurs. And the critics confirmed it: “Not since Toscanini.”

Almost anything she wanted seemed within her grasp now. Two weeks into 1952, she sang
Norma
at La Scala. The production was cobwebbed and the scenery dated from 1931, but Maria, according to
Musical America
, “electrified the audience by her very presence even before singing a note.” She sang eight
Normas
and in between, whether at the Grand Hotel or at the opera house, in her dressing room or her bedroom, she worked on her first (and, as it turned out, last) Mozart heroine: Constanze in
Die Entfühurung aus dem Serail
. It was a part that made tremendous demands on Maria’s stamina, range and agility: in the first aria alone, she was required to touch over twenty high Cs and eleven high Ds. It took a great deal out of Maria and she felt that it gave her very little back.

She mastered all the technical difficulties and received unanimous admiration and clamorous ovations, but she never sang another Mozart opera. “Most of Mozart’s music is dull,” she said once at a public round table at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. And at one of her master classes there, the same instinctive reaction was wrapped in the language of musical diplomacy. “Mozart,” she told a student soprano, “is often done on the tips of the toes, with too much fragility. It should be sung with the same frankness you sing
Trovatore
with.” Maria, who more than any other singer this century had dared portray in all their darkness man’s most primitive emotions, found the emotions of Mozart’s music too contained, and she even found it hard to respond to the deeper harmony that is at the soul of Mozart’s music.

Maria sang “Martern aller Arten,” the most famous coloratura aria in the opera, twice again in concert—once in San Remo in 1954, and once in 1957, as a showpiece for the gala inaugural concert of the Dallas Civic Opera. She may have called Mozart’s music dull, but the passion with which she invested the aria belies the claim. The 1957 concert itself was not recorded, but its rehearsal was, and it is a fascinating document of Callas’ generosity at rehearsals. She begins at half-voice, but the emotion in the music soon engulfs her and she sings the entire program unerringly with the full intensity of a performance.

She was equally unsparing of herself when it came to her schedule. On April 26, only a fortnight after the last
Entfühurung
and with
Norma
in between, she opened the Florence festival with another long-forgotten opera, Rossini’s
Armida
. Maria loved Rossini but Armida, which Rossini wrote for Colbran who became his wife, is an almost impossible part, full of perilous roulades, hazardous trills, runs and leaps—and, as sung by Maria, full of dazzling fireworks. Despite its five important tenor roles,
Armida
is undeniably a one-woman show, and, on this occasion, it was greeted universally as a one-woman triumph, especially by those who knew that Maria had learned the part in five days. At the dress rehearsal, the performance officially attended by the critics, Maria’s spectacular memory let her down for once, and she emerged from the elaborate litter in which Armida makes her first appearance totally unable to remember her first line. Completely unflustered, she asked for her words and made her entrance again. On the first night she was in absolute control throughout, and during her twelve-minute final scene, she pushed her voice to new limits, spanning almost three octaves. It all came to a climax with one of the most elaborate of all Rossini’s arias, delivered by Maria in a torrent of sound. “It is possible,” wrote Andrew Porter in
Opera
, “to feel that the phrases beneath the florid passages are far too much overlaid with ornament; but it was impossible to regret it when Maria Callas was singing them.”

From Milan to Florence, from Florence to Rome and two performances of
I Puritani
, then from Rome to Verona. There were two weeks left before Maria was due to arrive in Mexico for the beginning of her third tour, and, instead of there being a time of much-needed rest, they were consumed almost entirely by two major additions to her repertoire: Gilda in Verdi’s
Rigoletto
and Lucia in Donizetti’s
Lucia di Lammermoor
. The slave driver inside Maria was pushing her on more relentlessly than ever. Of course it made sense to have these new roles ready to try in Mexico before exposing them to the more critical Italian audiences, and of course it was wonderful that from the beginning of January to the beginning of May in this new year, she had sung one
Vespri
, five
Puritanis
, nine
Normas
, three
Trovatores
, four
Entfühurungs
and three
Armidas
, but the price she was paying was very considerable. The part of her that needed space to breathe and to grow was being stifled, her need for attention and love ignored or denied. Maria Callas—already, according to many, the most exciting singer on the operatic stage—was shuttling from city to city, from role to role and from triumph to triumph.