Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (20 page)

Sandro Sequi, the Italian stage director who watched and studied many Callas performances during her prime, talked about “the Callas secret”: “This alternation of tension and relaxation, I believe, was the key to Callas’s magnetism, why her singing and acting were so compelling. Think of the movement of her arms in the Mad Scene of
Lucia
. They were like the wings of a great eagle, a marvelous bird. When they went up—and she often moved them very slowly—they seemed heavy, not airy like a dancer’s arms, but weighted. Then she reached the climax of a musical phrase, her arms relaxed and flowed into the next gesture, until she reached a new musical peak, and then again calm. There was a continuous line to her singing and movements, which were really very simple. Everything about her struck me as natural and instinctive, never intellectual. She was extremely stylized and classic, yet at the same time human—but a humanity on a higher plane of existence, almost sublime.”

Thousands thought Maria sublime, but just as many were busy enumerating the faults of her voice. Picking at the flaws in Maria’s singing, as one of her more ardent Milanese admirers put it, was like pointing out that in Leonardo’s
Last Supper
the knives needed polishing. Nevertheless the nit-picking was going on, the downright condemnation of her voice as ugly, even unmusical. And the criticism seemed to be growing in direct proportion to the adulation.

There was another battle that Maria was winning, and her victory was reflected in the downward trend of a chart kept at home by the Meneghinis:

Twenty-eight kilos (sixty-two pounds) lost between the
Gioconda
of December 1952 and the
Don Carlo
of 1954—the last production in the Scala season. But the figures tell less than half the story; the result was a mythical transformation. “She became another woman,” said Carlo Maria Giulini who was conducting
Alceste
, “and another world of expression opened to her. Potentials held in the shadows emerged. In every sense, she had been transformed.” She could now even be lifted above three bearers’ heads and borne aloft into the temple as the curtain closed on the second act of
Alceste
.

Gluck’s
Alceste
had never been performed at La Scala before. Too classical for the Italian temperament, it was nevertheless a wonderful vehicle for Maria, and a wealth of talent headed by Giulini and Margherita Wallmann was lavished on the production. They both loved working with Maria. “For me,” said Giulini, “she was
il melodramma
—total rapport between word, music and action. It is no fabricated legend. In my entire experience of the theater, I know of no artist like Callas.” Margherita Wallmann had been fascinated by Maria even before they met. Margherita had caught a glimpse of her one night in a restaurant; at one point, Maria removed her glasses: “ . . . Her huge, dark eyes, they haunted me, for I felt I had seen them before. One day I realized where. They are exactly like those of the famous statue of the charioteer of Auriga at Delphi.” There is no doubt that Greek subjects stirred deep emotions in Maria. The classic gestures of Greek tragedy were no mere details in her performance; they came from her own great depths. But, as always, there were many who disliked Maria in
Alceste
and Klemperer was one of them. Once when Walter Legge took her to a concert of his, Klemperer told her as much: “Your Lucia is marvelous,” he said. “Your Aida . . . your Norma . . . but your Alceste, forgive me for saying so, is not good. . . . We must do something together.”

“It would be an honor.”

“What would you like to do?”

“Alceste, of course, Maestro.”

The maestro’s reservations notwithstanding, Alceste, the Queen of Pharae, was a fitting vehicle for the new Maria. With no high Renaissance bulk about her, she was in everything linear, elegant, dignified, graceful. In everything, that is, onstage. Offstage, even with her new figure, the new Biki wardrobe and her new poodle, Toy, in tow, Maria was the oddest mixture of grandeur and clumsiness—a combination of the inspired and the commonplace. As François Valéry, one of her closest friends in the last years, put it, “She could be extraordinarily beautiful and at times almost ugly.” Yet from the moment she stepped on the stage, through some almost mystic transformation, Maria became the character she was to play. Giulini summed up this transformation as he saw it happen during
Alceste
: “Offstage Maria is really a very simple woman of humble background. Alceste, however, is a great queen, a figure of classic nobility. Yet Callas transmitted all Alceste’s royal stature. To my mind it is useless to search for an explanation. It is a kind of genius.”

Six days after her second appearance as the Queen of Pharae, Maria made her first appearance as Elizabeth, Queen of Spain, in Verdi’s
Don Carlo
. She looked stunning in costumes of black, silver and white, designed by Nicola Benois and inspired by Velázquez. She had at last reached her desired weight and it was an ironic tribute to her transformation that the rave reviews were reserved for her physical appearance and her regal bearing; her singing was received with much less enthusiasm. Riccardo Malipiero, writing in
Opera
, felt that “ . . . Perhaps Callas’ voice is not quite suited to Verdi’s music. . . . This wonderful singer, so confident in difficult passages and powerful in dramatic passages, lacks the sweetness and softness necessary in moments of abandon . . .” Others felt that she would have been better as the fiery Eboli. In fact Ebe Stignani as Eboli got the greatest honors of the night. Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, who had instigated Maria’s first engagement at the Arena of Verona, was Philip II. He had remained a friend with whom Maria could relax and be at her most natural—and her most vulnerable. “Despite Maria’s power,” he remembers, “she often doubted herself and grew anxious, fearing failure. She could never rest because of the great obligations she felt to her work. She frequently asked practical advice about her acting. And if I suggested a gesture or pose she liked, she’d say: ‘Now, you gave me something I should have thought of myself.’ ”

Somehow Maria never overcame her frustration at the knowledge that she could not do everything, think of everything, achieve perfection in everything. The frustration stayed with her all her life and it grew as the difficulties with her voice increased. Right to the end, when she could no longer sing the high soprano roles, and opera houses around the world were offering her instead any mezzo-soprano part she cared to choose, Maria refused to consider any of them, except for Carmen—and she would sing that only on record. It was as though singing mezzo-soprano roles, accepting that she was human and therefore subject to waning powers, was equivalent to conceding defeat. In many ways she never forgave herself for not being superhuman.

While she was still singing
Don Carlo
at La Scala, she began to record
Norma
. Now she had her chance to help those who had helped her on the way up. It was her turn to influence casting and select her conductors—so Nicola Rossi-Lemeni found himself as Oroveso and, although Serafin had no official connection with La Scala, it was he who conducted most of the Callas operas recorded with the orchestra and chorus of La Scala.
Norma
was being recorded at the Cinema Metropol in Milan, and Maria’s arrivals and departures were watched eagerly by the Milanese. Autographs, handshakings, even spontaneous bursts of applause in the street—all the elements of mass popularity were building up. Visibility bred celebrity, which bred more visibility, which bred more celebrity; Maria was now on that particular carousel for good. Her celebrity was spreading even where she had not yet become visible. Requests for interviews from America came frequently, and Maria’s next goal was to repeat, even exceed, in America the triumph she had won in Europe. During an interview for the American magazine
High Fidelity
in one of the breaks from recording
Norma
, she articulated her artistic philosophy: “Every year I want to be better than the year before. Otherwise I’d retire. I don’t need the money. I work for art.”

As with many of Maria’s public pronouncements there was very little of Maria in them, and an awful lot of La Callas. It was more than true by now that she didn’t need the money, but she still wanted it both for itself and as a symbol of others wanting and needing her; nor did it mean that she stopped worrying about it. There was, however, a truly prophetic element in the statement. She did want every year to be better than the year before; and, even though she would never bring herself to speak the word, she did retire when she stopped getting better each year.

Recordings dominated the rest of that spring and summer. The long-playing record had stopped being a curiosity; a huge and growing market had opened and Maria’s records were in such demand internationally that EMI would not consider doing a recording at La Scala without her. Walter Legge had put together the winning combination of Callas-Gobbi-di Stefano, more often than not under Serafin’s baton, and this inspired partnership was to produce some of the greatest postwar recordings. In the spring and summer of 1954 the performances became an adjunct to the recordings. EMI wanted to record Verdi’s
La Forza del Destino
; Maria sang it at Ravenna. EMI wanted to record Boito’s
Mefistofele
; Maria sang it in the Arena of Verona, although, in the end, the recording was never made.

It was almost time to launch her American career. The Met had a ceiling of $1000 an evening for any singer, but for Lawrence Kelly and Carol Fox, two young concert organizers who were hoping to revive Chicago’s famous opera, the ceiling was dictated by what would persuade Maria to appear in Chicago. They agreed to everything: Maria’s choice of repertory—
Norma, Traviata
and
Lucia
; Maria’s casting suggestions, which meant that Gobbi, di Stefano and Rossi-Lemeni were all included; Maria’s, or rather Meneghini’s, financial terms—$12,000 for six performances and return travel and other expenses for two.

The news of Maria’s impending debut with the Chicago Lyric Opera had been trumpeted across the States long before the Meneghinis landed in Chicago at the end of October to a barrage of photographers and reporters. Maria’s life had become, especially in the popular papers, at once history and biography, legend and stereotype, epitomizing the American Dream. She was living out so many cultural and fairy-tale archetypes that the papers had a hard time choosing which to lead on: rags to riches, ugly duckling to beautiful swan, the infant prodigy returning as adult star, the little American from Washington Heights coming back home. The presence of George Callas by his daughter’s side meant that “the return of the native” aspect of the legend had no difficulty in winning the day. Maria was given a heroine’s welcome even before the sensation caused by
Norma
on the opening night. And after the performance, at the Angel Ball organized for the benefit of the Illinois Opera Guild, she did little more than shake hands and listen to unending congratulations.

Maria had launched the Lyric Opera of Chicago into international orbit. As for herself, the morning after was only a continuation of the triumph of the night before. “For my money,” wrote Claudia Cassidy in the
Chicago Tribune
, “she was not only up to specifications, she surpassed them. . . . She sang the ‘Casta Diva’ in a kind of mystic dream, like a goddess of the moon briefly descended.” Maria rang Claudia Cassidy after her review. She knew that Cassidy had first heard her singing
La Gioconda
at Verona, and what she wanted to say to her on the phone was not “Thank you for the review,” but “Have I improved?” Well, as Claudia Cassidy put it, that was one word for it.

Then came Maria’s
Traviata
—an exquisite courtesan dressed by Biki, a fragile creature of feverish excitement, temptations and fears, the girl who fled from artificiality into heartbreak. As Claudia Cassidy said after Maria’s death: “It’s all in Verdi’s music, but how many hear it?” It was after she had seen Violetta that Claudia Cassidy went to the Ambassador where Maria was staying to talk to her. On her way there she stopped at Elizabeth Arden’s to buy a lipstick the exact color of the great bow appliquéd on Violetta’s ball gown. Maria snatched it as greedily as a child. “I love presents,” she said. “And it’s the color of the bow on my dress. How wonderful!”

Maria was always insatiable when it came to presents. Like a child she was much less interested in their value than in the fact that they were presents, and like a child she had no compunction about asking for them. “When you come back to Paris will you bring me my favorite truffles?” she would ask a Greek friend, Christian Bischini, when she had moved to Paris and he was still living in Milan. Or, “Sander,” she would ask Gorlinsky, her agent, later on, “will you send me those quilts that I liked so much when you go to Germany?” But the bringing of presents by no means guaranteed her favor. Lipstick or no lipstick she liked Claudia Cassidy. She respected Cassidy’s knowledge, her professionalism and of course the fact that she so totally responded to what Maria was trying to achieve onstage.