Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (41 page)

In July, Maria made a hesitant attempt at a comeback to record Verdi and Rossini arias for EMI. The recording took place in London, at the Watford Town Hall, with Antonio Tonini conducting. It was a disappointment; Maria refused to give permission for its release and her self-confidence—so fragile at this stage—was damaged even further. But she left for Belgium, determined to go ahead with the concert she had agreed to give in Ostend. On the morning of the performance she woke up to discover that she had hardly any voice left. She called Peter Diamand who had arrived the night before. “Hallo, Emmanuele,” he said, convinced that the hoarse voice on the other end of the phone belonged to a male Italian friend. “It’s not Emmanuele, it’s Maria. Please come to my hotel. I don’t know what to do. I can’t sing tonight.”

Nor could she. The concert was canceled, and a few hours later she left Ostend, terrified at the prospect of the two performances of
Norma
she had agreed to give in Greece in August. She had only agreed because of Onassis; doing what she knew would make him happy had become essential to her own happiness. As soon as making money had lost its challenge, Onassis had turned his eyes to Greece. Ulysses was his favorite hero. He identified with his wanderings and his tribulations, and he longed to be able to identify with his triumphant homecoming. Creating Olympic Airways was the first step, but he wanted to forge more links, to have more tangible proof that he belonged to Greece and that in some definable way Greece belonged to him. To have his established mistress score a triumph at the ancient and revered Theater of Epidaurus, and to be there to share the honors, would be another link with Greece. Maria, apart from wanting to please Ari, was herself beginning to feel the emotional call of her homeland. Greece was one of the bonds that joined them, and she valued everything that kept him close to her.

It was the strength that she drew not only from his presence but from knowing how important it was to him that made her overcome her fears and go ahead with
Norma
. They spent most of the month before leaving for Greece in Monte Carlo. That summer of 1960, that magically happy summer, he put everything aside to be with her; they were constantly together. Onassis, who had never in his life kept regular hours, had found in Maria someone who had no trouble living according to his peculiar clock that often reversed day and night. If he was spending the night doing business—or talking it, which he loved at least as much—Maria would be working on her Norma, unless she had joined the men, absorbing everything like a sponge as she had done all those years ago at the Athens Conservatory when she listened in on everybody else’s lessons as well as her own.

Many nights were spent at the Maona, Monte Carlo’s latest nightclub. Soon the story began to spread that the club had been named for them: MAria, ONAssis. In fact the club’s godmother was Tina Onassis, and it was she who had given it its Polynesian name. It was at the Maona with its Hawaiian decor that Ari and Maria were photographed dancing together. “It is impossible,” wrote the London
Daily Express
, “for them to dance cheek to cheek as Miss Callas is slightly taller than Mr. Onassis. But as she danced she has lowered her head to nibble his ear and he has smiled rapturously.” From the outside it looked as though their marriage was imminent. “I am fairly certain they will be married before the year is out,” a close business associate was reported as saying. And the marriage looked no less imminent from the inside—so much so that on August 10, once again at the Maona, Maria made public their intention to marry. The next day Onassis had dismissed the report as a fantasy and Maria’s remark as a pleasantry. It was a public humiliation, but Maria, as she had said herself, knew “how to wait.” Years later, after Jackie Kennedy had become the second Mrs. Onassis, Maria would admit bitterly that patience does not always pay. “I should have insisted that he marry me in 1960. Then he would have done it.”

Instead, the subject of their marriage was to become a regularly renewed disappointment for her. It would come to the surface, it would subside, it would swell again. For the time being, Maria was satisfied. “What Onassis offered me,” she was to say later, “was the feeling of being totally appreciated.” The little girl who had always felt that she was only loved when she was singing was at last loved whether she sang or not. Her singing never meant anything to Onassis except as a vehicle of her success. Soon it was to be the vehicle for what was for him a solemn ritual—Maria returning to Greece at his side to appear as Norma in Epidaurus.

On the first night, torrential rain made it impossible for the performance to begin. Twenty thousand men, women and children poured out of the stadium into cars, boats and buses as the deluge continued. They were back on August 24 for the new first night, and as soon as Maria appeared, they rose to their feet. Patriotic and artistic fervor combined in one of the greatest ovations Epidaurus and Maria had ever heard. If, as many would argue, her Norma was her masterpiece, then the night of August 24 must be considered the culmination of a career which had in many quarters already been written off. In the ancient theater which had witnessed the birth of Greek drama, Maria went beyond acting and opera and touched the hearts of thousands who knew nothing of either. From her very first notes, the audience was magnetized by the power she displayed. And yet there was a new tenderness, a real mother’s feeling coming through in the way Norma responded to her children. “Maria identified with Norma greatly,” said Zeffirelli. “In a way it was her own story. Maria, after all, is a high priestess—the high priestess of her art. Yet, at the same time, she is the most fallible of women. Very human. As Norma, Maria created the maximum of what opera can be. In a lifetime, one can see many great things in the theater, but to see Maria Callas in
Norma
, what is there to compare to it?”

By the end of the performance, the crowd at Epidaurus would have replied with one voice: “Nothing.” She had entered into Norma and exposed her inner turmoil in all its nakedness. She had carried the audience and herself into a realm far beyond everyday life or everyday art. Beneath the star-filled Greek sky, a crown of laurel leaves was placed on her head. And at the end of the applause, which at times had seemed as though it would never stop, it was not excitement or joy that filled the resonant silence that followed—it was awe.

For two men sitting side by side in the front row, the awe was mixed with pride. George Callas and Aristotle Onassis had met for the first time in Epidaurus. The Greek multimillionaire and the Greek pharmacist had spent hours talking. “He is
dombros
, your father,” Ari said to Maria—and
dombros
, meaning direct, honest, with no pretense, was a term of high praise in Onassis’ vocabulary. It was one of the contradictions in his character that, although he had a craving for the famous and the important, some of his happiest moments were spent drinking ouzo and talking to the simple Greeks, the islanders and the peasants he met wherever he went. He never lost the emotional capacity to relate to them on their own terms—which, after all, at a level not far below the surface, were his own terms too. Whenever he was in Greece, whether doing business or relaxing, he spoke the language of the marketplace. Maria loved speaking Greek with him, singing the folk songs of the taverna with him, picking and eating from his plate or following his example and eating with her fingers à la grecque.

In the euphoria of her happiness with Aristo, she forgot all caution, and although she had to sing a second
Norma
four days after her first performance, they stayed up late every night, and explored the countryside together during the day, spending hours in the scorching August sun. The result was that on the day of the performance she developed a high fever and felt so weak that the doctors refused to allow her out of bed. But now the famous Callas will took over. Nothing was going to stop her from honoring her contract; however high her temperature, she was not going to disappoint Aristo, Greece and the public that had four days earlier crowned her with laurel leaves. She sang and it was another triumph. In her new expansive mood, with Onassis’ prompting and to complete the all-around celebrations, she gave her fee of $10,000 for the creation of a Scholarship Fund for Young Musicians.

Then with her confidence regained she arrived in Milan where she recorded
Norma
at La Scala with Serafin once more on the podium. It was like the old days, except that she felt a new woman. And she was looking forward to working again with Visconti in a new production of Donizetti’s
Poliuto
, the opera she had chosen for her comeback at La Scala. But the days were over when she drilled and groomed herself like an Olympic athlete before the rehearsals for a new opera began. If she had been an instrumentalist, it might have been possible to combine a full-scale musical career with Ari’s life-style; she might, perhaps, have been able to maintain an outstanding artistic position and sustained their relationship—even though she had more than once said that such a relationship is a full-time job. What was not possible was to remain the queen of the operatic world and at the same time become the ex officio queen of the beau monde. There was little doubt what her true inclinations were; even when she was most deeply involved in the beau monde, in her heart she always remained an outsider. Its attraction for her, real though it was in the Maxwell days, would have been quickly exhausted if it were not for Aristo fueling it. It was part of his life; it had to be part of hers. But athletes, whether of the voice or the track, cannot stay up all night and practice the next day.

Yet we can hear in her last recording of
Norma
just how much her experiences with Onassis—both the joy and the pain—had enriched her art. John Ardoin, comparing this with her earlier recordings, stresses the depth of expression in the new one that transcends technical polish: “This
Norma
is more giving, more many-sided, more complex and drawn in finer lines.
‘Casta Diva’
is quieter, more mesmerizing. . . . Along with this, the fearsome Norma remains intact; indeed she draws a new strength through the gulf of contrast Callas meticulously establishes.” Maria clearly had a greater store of emotions on which to draw. Experience had enhanced the richness and depth of her feelings, but dramatic singing at these new exalted heights demanded a unique, and uniquely cruel, combination of the asceticism of St. Francis, the physical stamina of a marathon runner and the experience of life of Madame de Pompadour. For over twenty years, she had demonstrated both the asceticism and the physical stamina; but these strengths had been eroded by her new life. The day before rehearsals were due to begin, her voice was in poor condition, and she felt tired and apprehensive. Then the thunderbolt struck. Visconti was walking out on
Poliuto
in protest against the Italian government’s censoring of his film
Rocco and His Brothers
and his production of Giovanni Testori’s play,
L’Arialda
. “I’m finished with any artistic work in Italy,” he announced. At the same time, he sent a telegram to Maria explaining how it hurt him to abandon
Poliuto
, “above all because it prevents me from working with you, which is the work that gives me the greatest fulfillment. Although I apologize to you, dear Maria, I am sure that you will understand my state of mind and approve of my decision. I embrace you, as always, with all my admiration and immense affection.” Maria wrote back, full of sympathy, saying that she had been “counting the hours” waiting for them to begin working on
Poliuto
, but that she was even more distressed because he was being “tormented.”

Entirely blameless this time, she was caught in the middle of the censorship war. Herbert Graf stepped in to save
Poliuto
and to direct Maria in her return appearance at La Scala after thirty much-publicized months of absence. The opening night was not only the highlight of the Italian musical season, it was an Aristotle Onassis spectacular. Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, and the Begum Aga Khan were among his guests, as well as assorted members of his international coterie and Elsa Maxwell, who had been especially flown over from the States. Maxwell had nursed her wounded feelings long enough, and seemed at last prepared to accept the unpleasant fact that her beloved Maria now belonged to Onassis. It was almost like old times again. She dedicated her next column to Maria’s opening, describing it as something out of the Arabian nights. Sixteen thousand carnations given by Balmain decorated the auditorium, and among the audience of three thousand some had paid, according to The Associated Press, 800 pounds for a single ticket. Onassis arrived as the overture was beginning and slipped quietly into his box.

“Maria,” said Nicola Benois who designed the production, “badly needed a strong hand to guide her, to give her courage—the hand of Luchino.” On that night courage was infinitely more important than artistic guidance. The presence of Ari and his fashionable friends, in addition to the usual Scala audience ready to pounce on her first vocal slip, terrified her. It was not just stage nerves; it was a deep, paralyzing anxiety as if something cold, horrible and humiliating was about to happen to her. It was as if all the whistling and booing, the throwing of radishes and walking out, all the rejections that she had experienced at one opera house or another, had merged into a single overwhelming specter and come to haunt her. And echoing through all these in her mind’s ear was a prolonged roar of laughter.

She gave a performance almost designed to avoid risks, to avoid that nightmare roar of laughter. The woman whose audacity and determination to achieve the impossible had become legendary made her singing entrance as though she was carefully and hesitantly feeling her way into the part.

The choice of an opera that posed few vocal problems was in itself a sign of Maria’s longing to be free of nervous tension—even at the expense of selecting for her return to La Scala an opera in which the heroine, Paolina, is less important than the hero, which demanded no great and potentially dangerous dramatic outbursts, and which gave her few chances to show that she could still command an astounding range of dramatic emotion. But the end of the opera was quite miraculous. “It was,” wrote Andrew Porter, “an almost physical enactment of the workings of grace, from the first stirrings when this pagan heroine listens to the Christians’ hymn, to the supernatural radiance which floods her in the final scene as she resolves to join the Christians in martyrdom.” The audience confirmed the triumph she feared would elude her. As always it was not as bad in realization as in anticipation. But the agony of the prospect extracted a higher and higher toll from her. Even after the opera was finished, her performance had to continue, for the evening was crowned with a supper given in her honor by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace. After the celebrities and the gossip columnists had gone, Maria could give her four remaining performances without that ruthless spotlight on her. Ten days after opening night, at an ordinary matinee, with no sharp-tongued columnists and bejeweled socialites, her performance demonstrated unequivocally that it was not her voice that was the cause of her decline, but her fears. “No one will believe me,” wrote Andrew Porter in the
Musical Times
, “when I say I heard the only performance, of the five she gave, in which Maria Callas found her peak form (a matinee on 18 December, for the record). But so it was. She was spellbinding, secure, confident and inspiring confidence.”