Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (48 page)

In just over a month she would be forty-one and she was ready to take on anything—including living two lives to the full. In 1965 Maria was constantly rushing to meet the demands of an intensely competitive professional life and a frenzied social schedule, squandering her resources as though she was running out of time—which in a sense she was.

On the day after her forty-first birthday, she began her recording of
Tosca
, which was to be followed in the new year with eight performances of
Tosca
for L’Opéra. A few days before opening night on February 19, France Musique broadcast an hour-long interview with Maria. At times she sounded like a Chinese sage: “Those who have fear cannot reach great heights,” or, “If you are not sure of something, do not risk.” This last statement was curiously prophetic. Up to this time her entire life had been a stark contradiction of that statement; but from the end of 1965, it became more true with every year that passed that Maria would not take risks unless she could be sure of succeeding.

She opened in
Tosca
in a state of euphoria fully justified by the ecstatic reception she received. The entire Zeffirelli production, which had been brought over from London, was a triumph, and Maria even agreed to sing an additional, ninth, performance on March 13.

The next day she flew to New York for two performances of
Tosca
, which, as one critic put it, “became personal triumphs of the wildest, most rewarding, insistent kind.” From Paris, she had written to her godfather: “I hope the lawyers of the doctors don’t sue me upon my arrival. I would hate that.” But there was no danger; Leo Lantzounis had made arrangements for the bills to be paid in installments from the money Maria was sending him for her parents. Her father had recovered by now, but the days when he was present at Maria’s first nights, sharing her triumphs, were past. “I wish you were my father,” Maria had written to Leo. And it was Leo and his wife who were there on March 19, when Maria opened in
Tosca
.

Fausto Cleva was conducting, Franco Corelli was Cavaradossi and Tito Gobbi once again Scarpia. The Met was sold out weeks ahead and standing room went on sale the Sunday before. On Thursday evening there was already a long line of standees armed with sleeping bags, blankets, pillows and a banner which they hung on the front of the opera house:
WELCOME HOME, CALLAS
.

Seven years had passed since Maria’s last appearance at the Met on March 5, 1958—also as Tosca. The artistic conditions under which she had to work were, if anything, worse: she was expected to sing in one of the oldest and ugliest productions of
Tosca
, with scenery that was actually shaking; she was not given a single stage rehearsal and there was only one piano rehearsal in a studio with no light and no props. Yet not once did Maria complain, even though on top of everything she had not been consulted on the choice of conductor. Opera officials watched her in amazement. Many, still tied to the apron strings of the romantic myth, were worried that the cooling of her personality might have put out the fire of her voice. “She’s mellowed so much,” said one, “I bet she’s lost the fire of her performance.” But the flame was as incandescent as ever. A huge house was there to bear witness to the fact and a huge crowd was outside waiting—some hoping for a miracle that would get them a seat, some watching the celebrities arrive. Suddenly, a few moments before curtain up, the crowd began to applaud. All eyes turned in the same direction: Mrs. John F. Kennedy, still very much an American heroine, had arrived.

The atmosphere was electric from the outset. At the sound of Tosca’s first “Mario,” still offstage, the audience gasped. Her entrance was greeted with a roar of applause which went on for an astounding four minutes. The conductor had no option but to stop the orchestra and wait for it, if not to die out, at least to quieten. Maria froze, and not for a second, while the applause was going on, did she step out of character. It was at the end of the performance during the sixteen curtain calls that she displayed that special Callas genius for acknowledging applause. The performance was scheduled to end at 10:40. It finished at 11:40, the extra hour having been taken up by the audience cheering, breaking into the middle of scenes and applauding, applauding, applauding.

From
The New York Times
, the
Washington Post, Opera News
, the
Saturday Review, The New Yorker, Time
and a score of other publications, there sounded the same celebratory note.

Miss Callas entered, and all things came to a halt. . . .

A gasp went through the audience.

Her conception of the role was electrical.

Miss Callas is a unique creature—already, in fact, a legend . . .

Her face mirrored even fleeting expressions implicit in the music . . .

She was an electrifying figure on the stage, youthful, graceful, sensitive, beautiful to contemplate—and she lived the role as no other singer within my memory . . .

If she did not care to sing a note, she would still rank among the genuine dramatic interpreters of our time.

Hands. Just to watch Miss Callas’s hands at work almost recreated the opera. They caressed, stretched out in love and hatred, fluttered helplessly like a caged bird . . . At times she even sang through her hands.

The stage presence shown by Callas in her performance would have raised the hackles on a deaf man.

Her performance raised all kinds of hope that even the minor, trivial, technical problems of her recent years may be behind her. In any case, in fair days and foul, the Callas singing has been the voice of pure and palpable passion.

Here we have a woman who, like her or not, is the most important person singing in opera today. Her greatness is in her fierce and all-pervasive power to realize every dramatic nuance of a character and to recreate that realization through the overwhelming use of her body and voice.

Anyone, admirer or not, must admit that she has earned the right to stand at the top of a pyramid, with a total production—scenery, direction, conductor and cast—designed upwards in a consistent structure.

But standing at the top of a pyramid felt much more like a burden than a privilege to Maria. It was as if with each celebratory adjective and with each adulatory word she read, the load she carried was becoming heavier. “After all,” she said on a BBC interview, “what is the legend? The public made me.” The legend of la Callas had long since begun to eat away at the woman, Maria. The more she identified with the legend, the greater the responsibility she felt toward it, the greater the fear that she might betray it. News of her New York triumph had very quickly reached Paris and everybody was expecting her to return exhilarated; instead she arrived exhausted. There were five performances of
Norma
at the Paris Opéra looming up and then
Tosca
at Covent Garden. But first there was a special edition of
The Great Interpreters
, a television program in which she sang arias from
Manon, La Sonnambula
and
Gianni Schicchi
, and after which she received hundreds of letters thanking her for “meeting the people” in this fashion and urging her to do more of it.

The first night of
Norma
at L’Opéra was on May 14. In the last few days her fear had been mounting. On the night itself, full of injections and medicines, Maria felt that she could not even walk to the stage. In a talk with John Ardoin—her most moving outpouring on tape—she talked with pain of the gulf between the legend on the stage and Maria in her dressing room. “Can you go and tell them, John,” she said, or rather cried out, “that I am a human being and I have my fears . . . when they only see you sparkling under the lights, the limelights . . . how can people know you? How can newspapermen know you?”

She did go on. An announcement was made asking for the audience’s understanding. It turned out to be unnecessary for the first performance, but very necessary for the second. By the third, Fiorenza Cossotto had replaced Maria’s old friend Giulietta Simionato as Adalgisa. The understanding Maria had asked from the audience had so far been automatically extended to her by all her colleagues, who sensed the agony she was going through. Cossotto was the exception. Zeffirelli remembers with anger what happened: “In the duet, Norma and Adalgisa must sing in close harmony holding hands. When Maria would signal to end a phrase, Cossotto would ignore her sign and hold on to the final note for a few extra seconds. So ungenerous. Maria was hurt by this. I went backstage and swore to her I would never work with her again. And I never have.” But this did not help during the next three performances that Maria had to sing with her. Fiorenza Cossotto was determined to outsing the great Callas. It was hardly an achievement, as even Maria’s most ardent fans would acknowledge that Cossotto, with her thoroughbred voice, could securely grasp high notes that Maria only snatched at.

The night of Maria’s last
Norma
, May 29, was another gala night, with the Shah of Iran in the audience. Maria’s doctor had tried to persuade her not to go on, so shattered were her nerves, but she found the prospect of facing the uproar of yet “another Callas cancellation” even harder than the prospect of the performance. She went ahead. By the third act, it was clear to those close to her that she could not finish. To top it all, Cossotto treated their big duet like a duel. It was painful to watch Maria desperately trying to keep up with her rival singing at full voice. She practically sleepwalked through the end of the third act, and as soon as the curtain came down, she collapsed and was carried unconscious to her dressing room.

The curtain fell never to rise again. An hour later, supported by two men, Maria left L’Opéra forever. “Forgive me—I shall return to win your forgiveness,” she whispered to the waiting crowd. Her eyes were moist, her face white; she was crushed, and the crowd had sensed it. After her Rome “walkout,” there had been an uproar against her, but now, apart from the few Cossotto supporters bursting into cheers for their favorite and catcalls for Maria, it was as if the audience was reaching out to share with her their strength and love.

At the zenith of her power, ten years earlier, she had been asked how she felt about the endless controversy surrounding her. “When my enemies stop hissing,” she had said with that mock aggressiveness behind which she hid her fears, “I shall know I’m slipping.” They had not entirely stopped hissing, but their hisses were only a faint, hesitant echo of the past. As Maria’s nightmare was beginning, the bulk of the audience was shouting “Bravo.” In the pain of her breakdown, everything seemed meaningless. She knew she could not go on singing without destroying herself, and she also knew, with that clarity that pain often brings, that the hectic gaiety of Onassis’ world was not where happiness, or any real meaning, could be found.

“What are we in search of? Have you ever thought of that, John? What are we in search of today?” she asked John Ardoin. The life inside her was crying out for some clue. She was floundering, but she could at least find sustenance in her love for Aristo, and his for her. She would use this love to ward off despair until her love itself became desperate.

Meanwhile four
Toscas
in London loomed threateningly ahead of her. Maria could not bear either to contemplate or to cancel them. Georges Prêtre talked to her on the phone before he left for London; she told him nothing of her fears. Her suite at the Savoy was waiting for her and her plane ticket had been bought. The Friday before the Monday she was due to arrive in London, she was seen and photographed at the Rothschild Ball in Paris. The Wednesday after she was due to arrive—forty-eight hours before she was due to sing—the London papers were full of “the mystery of missing Maria Callas.” In the evening, she rang David Webster at home. She was ill; her blood pressure was dangerously low and her doctors would not allow her to travel, let alone sing four performances. Panic broke out: people had been queueing around Covent Garden for five nights to get tickets; all performances were sold out; Georges Prêtre and Tito Gobbi were waiting for her to start rehearsing; and the last performance was a royal gala in the presence of the queen. David Webster talked to the doctors, then he talked to Maria in Paris, then he talked to Maria again and again, and finally he boarded a plane and arrived on her doorstep. He pleaded with her to sing at least once, at the royal gala; and Maria, who genuinely cared for Webster, gave in.

Marie Collier took over the first three performances and Maria herself arrived at the Savoy on July 3. The following night, on the eve of the performance, in a room next to hers, a Canadian businessman did not sleep. Maria spent the whole night singing Tosca—beautifully, according to her neighbor. But she knew that singing Tosca beautifully alone in her room was no guarantee that she would sing it beautifully on the night itself. She had said as much herself a few years earlier. “I say to my friends, if I had a performance tonight look how beautifully I’d sing. But probably if I did have the performance then I would say just the opposite. ‘Oh, how horrible I feel and I don’t feel like singing. Why do I have to sing?’ ”

There was something cold about that gala night on July 5. It was as if Maria could feel the disappointment and disapproval of her absent friends, those who had queued uncomplainingly for days and heard Marie Collier instead of their idol. And the gala audience, with its inevitable complement of those who were there to be seen rather than to hear, did nothing to dispel the chill in Maria’s heart, despite the enthusiastic applause that greeted her curtain calls at the end. Part of her surely knew, as she left Covent Garden for the Savoy, that this was the last time; she would never sing another opera.