100 years have passed since the birth of María Callas
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
…In reality, any man could have taken the place of Aristotle Onassis. Maria Callas, despite all her extravagance on stage, was very naive and always a follower, not a leader in life. At least that’s what emerges from her letters, from interviews, from memories in which Maria only studies, sings and loves. Nothing else. She was not independent, and even the pseudonym Callas was not her choice: it was her pharmacist father who cut off her long and awkward surname Kalogeropoulou in the United States.
I could travel across the ocean without money. I might cry after watching a “war movie.” I could enjoy the little things and be loudly surprised by a small bill at a restaurant. She didn’t have a very good sense of humor, she wasn’t vindictive and she was used to asking her lover in every letter if she had eaten well. And it’s kind of skinny…
That’s why I write: the most famous romance of her life, with the billionaire Onassis, could not have happened. Mary could easily meet someone else, not necessarily a rich man. And dedicate yourself entirely to it. As a devoted daughter, student, concubine.
She was real, deep and fantastic when she sang. She often spoke of her “dark” voice, of how he worked on her, of how hard she tried. She always tried to be the best. But she could only express herself with the help of someone else’s music, someone else’s words, someone else’s direction. Foreign writers of legends about an inaccessible and capricious diva.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
Mothers and daughters without dolls.
On December 2, 1923, a girl was born into a family of Greek emigrants. Sofia Cecilia Kalos, also known as Maria Anna Sofia Kekilia Kalogeropoulou at baptism. She went to New York, then the female part of the family moved to Greece.
Maria’s entire childhood was filled with music lessons. She does not allow dolls or any other female entertainment. She didn’t receive an ounce of information about fashion, lighting, good taste or choreography. Callas herself once admitted that her hands seemed “useless and cumbersome” to her. Maria dressed ridiculously, but there was no other option: her Greek mother interfered everywhere. And in her daughter’s wallet and in her wardrobe, deciding everything for her.
The mother did not allow María to spend more than five minutes in front of the mirror. The girl should have studied and not filled her head with all kinds of nonsense … The singer was also fed by her mother. Opera means fat, she decided and fed the girl the best she could. Callas recalls: “So I became a plump woman with a crimson face, dotted with countless pimples that drove me crazy.”
But there was also a time when Callas ate by asking for vegetables from the surrounding farmers. I walked with a basket, collecting tomatoes and boiled cabbage leaves. It was an occupation, the Germans in 1941 were ready to shoot at that basket. Callas will long remember the friend who brought the family a bottle of vegetable oil and potatoes. It looked like a treasure. Maria will not forget her hunger.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
“When you’re not there everything is ugly”
Only María Callas herself could say that the first marriage candidate of her life was ideal. His name was Giovanni Battista Meneghini, he was the director of a brick factory and he was much older than her. She loved visiting brothels and once she said that Callas was fat and dressed like a dog. Maria didn’t know this. She called him “Titta.” Their relationship was strange: Battista controlled income and expenses and sometimes correspondence. Maria counted everything she spent on hotels and clothes. She asked her man to send her money on time and write to her every day. Sometimes three letters. Sad, lonely, in love, studying and rehearsing. They praise me. But strange, strange, strange. No appetite. I eat green salad and eggs.
“I am happy with the hotel, it is clean, they change my towels every day, etc., but the bathroom is really poor and I suffer from it. “I would move, but it would cost more and you would scold me,” he wrote to his brick king. – “Rome is a big and beautiful city, in any case, I like the small part that I saw, only when you are not there everything is ugly.”
Meneghini will then completely isolate Callas from the outside world and set conditions for everyone in the name of his operatic treasure. The mother was one of the first to suffer: Meneghini demanded that all the letters be translated into Italian and presented to him before they fell into Maria’s hands. Her mother was outraged: she lived well, took money from her daughter, her singer, and cursed her in her letters. She somehow even claimed that she gave birth to Mary just so that she, her mother, would take care of her. And she reproached her daughter for her ingratitude.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
Aristotle Onassis – collector of famous women
When Onassis appeared in Maria’s life, both were not free. It was the end of the fifties and the Callas-Meneghini couple received an invitation for a cruise. The opera diva was expected on the luxurious yacht “Christina”, among the guests were Winston Churchill and his wife, the official wife of Onassis and many famous little gentlemen.
After meeting Aristotle, Maria felt loved, she did not hide it and abandoned her operatic career. She was no longer a money-making machine, but a desirable woman, and he loved that. And Aristotle, quickly breaking out, just as quickly began to cool towards Callas, although he continued to give her expensive gifts. He divorced his wife Athena, but was in no hurry to marry Mary. And then Callas gave birth (Onassis reacted coldly to the news of the pregnancy). The baby died after just two hours of survival. Maria was alone in the cemetery.
Next was Jackie. Jackie Kennedy, the most famous widow in the world, a wonderful trophy, the woman Onassis rushed to marry. She did not bring happiness to her husband. In her last dying weeks, it was not Jackie who was near her, but the faithful Maria. Soon she too passed away, bequeathing her ashes to be scattered on the island where Aristotle was buried. She was only 53 years old, she was 1977. She spent almost all the time before her death as a sick recluse in Paris, staring at the television screen, on which she could barely make out anything.
The voice remained in the recordings, the inspired face remained in the photographs. The money didn’t go anywhere (everyone robbed him). But somewhere, probably, there is still the shadow of a Greek girl who told with surprise how someone (oh God!) suddenly put his hand on her knee. And he still needs to learn the role for the premiere, how eccentric!…
THREE MORE STORIES
* Maria greatly appreciated a Chinese proverb: “Whoever rides a tiger cannot get off it.” The full quote from her memoir reads as follows: “I know that enemies do not sleep, but I will try, as far as humanly possible, not to disappoint my audience, who loves me and whose respect and admiration I do not want to disappoint. lose. “Be careful, María,” my dear friend and wonderful critic Eugenio Gara often told me, “remember the Chinese proverb: “he who rides a tiger cannot dismount.” No, dear Eugenio, don’t worry, I will do everything possible to never get off the tiger.”
* One day, after the opera, Maria was given a bouquet of radishes instead of flowers. She described it like this: “In January 1956, La Scala revived La Traviata and now we should talk about the “radish drama”, although this is already a very old story. In fact, when bowing, due to my nearsightedness, I mistook a bouquet of radishes for a bouquet of flowers. Several clusters fell onto the stage and rolled across it, falling directly into the hands of Luchino Visconti, who, sitting in the prompter’s booth, was dying of laughter. And since out-of-season vegetables could not simply be bought in the store before the performance, they clearly planned everything in advance and, apparently, prepared it carefully. Well, seriously, who goes to the theater with bunches of radishes in their pockets? In any case, these little dirty tricks always turn against those who create them, or rather, against those who initiate them; And I haven’t worried about this for a long time.”
* The “yellow” journalists attributed Maria’s weight loss to the fact that a certain worm, a tapeworm, was implanted in her stomach. In fact, Callas lost 30 kilograms, going from one hundred to seventy, and then struggled with excess weight throughout her life. But in her letters, talking about her diet, Maria talks about grass and eggs, about risotto with salad and, again, about eggs. She mentions butter.
THE NAIS IS OFFICIAL EDITOR ON NAIS NEWS