Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (31 page)

Maria was totally possessed by this production of
Medea
. She breathed Medea, felt Medea and could hardly sleep because of Medea. “She would ring at three or four in the morning,” remembers Minotis. “ ‘What exactly did you say this afternoon when I come out and climb the steps—from the left or from the right?’ She was not asleep. She was rehearsing on her own. What we had worked out together, she would pass through her own filter, to understand, to assimilate, to make part of herself.”

These were Maria’s secret moments of glory, of passion, of intoxication, when her instinct for creation and completion—at times even stronger than her instinct for survival—found its fulfillment. That sacred, consuming passion that she and Minotis shared was communicated to everyone else in the production. Rivalries, potential jealousies, even egos, seemed to have evaporated. Teresa Berganza, very young and very beautiful, was singing the maidservant, Neris. It was Maria who showed her how to act the part, and worked with her on it; and on the first night, when Berganza stopped the show with Neris’ aria, Maria waited—almost with pride—until the last waves of applause had subsided before she continued.

Jon Vickers was fascinated by her. He remembers their first meeting when they were rehearsing at an old exposition building—big, cold, drafty, with tape on the floor marking out the stage. “She arrived looking very elegant and very grand, and started giving me orders as if to test what mettle I was made of: ‘Don’t do that’; ‘Don’t do the other’; ‘Don’t look at me that way.’ I stopped, looked straight at her and said, ‘Madame Callas, Alexis Minotis has already put me through the production. You show me what
you
are going to do.’ We never had another problem working together. Her dedication was quite extraordinary. At the dress rehearsal, the day before the first night, we worked straight through until two in the morning. ‘I hope I have something left for tonight,’ she said as we were saying good night. She was a superb colleague, giving you something to work with and wanting you to give it back. She never tried to steal the limelight or upstage anyone. The enormous revolution that took place in opera after the war happened because of two people: Wieland Wagner, who totally changed the approach and emphasis of the physical aspects of stage direction, and Maria Callas, who took her talent almost to the point of masochism to serve her work and find its meaning.”

This was the intense atmosphere backstage in Dallas when on the afternoon of the dress rehearsal a telegram was brought to Maria from Rudolf Bing, demanding an immediate confirmation of the proposed Met schedule by ten o’clock the following morning. Maria, partly because of her total involvement in
Medea
, partly because, as she put it, she was not going to be intimidated by Bing’s “Prussian tactics,” ignored both the telegram and the ultimatum. The following morning, only hours before curtain time on the first night of
Medea
, another telegram arrived. Maria was being formally informed that her contract with the Metropolitan was being canceled forthwith.
BING FIRES CALLAS
ran the banner headlines. The musical world was astounded, and Maria’s hotel was invaded by the international press.

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.