Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (23 page)

Yet Maria never looked more bruised or more frail than in the last two acts of this
Traviata
. She sang “
Dite alla giovine
,” her renunciation of her lover in response to his father’s plea, with her face inclined to the floor and her voice a mere whisper that somehow filled the theater. Those who worked closely with Maria could not fail to sense the vulnerability in the woman as well as in the artist. Jon Vickers, who sang Jason to her Medea three years later, always referred to her as “little Maria.” “But she won’t let the little Maria show through,” he said once. The world had to be content with seeing the little Maria in little Amina, little Giulia, little Violetta . . .

The Visconti production of
La Traviata
and Maria’s portrayal of Violetta were to make operatic history, influencing many directors, designers and singers. “An opera,” Maria said once, “begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house. The audience sees only an excerpt.” On May 28, 1955, the curtain rose on the excerpt that the audience was allowed to see. Giulini described what he felt when, from the conductor’s podium, his eyes shifted to the stage, and to Violetta’s party: “My heart skipped a beat. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of what stood before me. The most emotional, exquisite decor I have seen in my entire life. Every detail made me feel I was materially entering another world, a world of incredible immediacy. The illusion of art vanished. I had the same sensation every time I conducted this production—over twenty times in two seasons. For me, reality was onstage. What stood behind me, the audience, auditorium, La Scala itself, seemed artifice. Only that which transpired onstage was truth, life itself.”

Giulini, Visconti and Maria spent hours, days, weeks together going over every detail. At no point did they lose track of their central concept: love was a thing Violetta had never known, even something she shied away from. Her unstated fear was that if she gave in to love she would lose her cold capacity to play with life. Maria’s transformation from a woman who lives for sheer selfish pleasure to a woman discovering for the first time her infinite capacity to give was so moving because it had been so deeply felt by Visconti, Giulini and Maria alike.

Words, music and action were in complete harmony. Maria had discovered in the music new movements and gestures, and through her understanding of Violetta she had found further colors in her voice, a deeper stillness and new, even sickly, tones for the last act. “I had striven for years,” she explained to Derek Prouse a few years later, “to create a sickly quality in the voice of Violetta; after all, she
is
a sick woman. It’s all a question of breath, and you need a very clear throat to sustain this tired way of talking or singing. And what did they say? ‘Callas is tired. The voice is tired.’ But that is precisely the impression I was trying to create. How could Violetta be in her condition and sing in big, high, round tones? It would be ridiculous.” And this sense of dramatic truth informed her every movement, even when she was not singing. Peter Diamand, who was then director of the Holland Festival and was later to fill the same role for the Edinburgh Festival, remembers a moment in her performance that vividly illustrates this: “I saw the production three times, and each time in the second act when Alfredo’s father comes in and makes a bitter remark about his son being ruined under her spell, Maria would walk across the stage with so strong an air of having been offended that every time I became convinced that something had happened to upset her and that she really was walking out of the production.”

The critics argued extravagantly about this
Traviata
, but it was largely Visconti who came under fire for, as one critic put it, “disfiguring and defiling Verdi’s opera.” The main targets for the critics’ anger were two of Visconti’s touches which many later came to see as inspired: Maria kicking her shoes in the air before tackling “
Sempre libera
” at the end of the first act, and Maria dying on her feet with her hat and coat on, her great eyes staring blankly into space, at the end of the last act. In time Visconti’s
Traviata
became one of the most talked about operatic legends, but for some time after opening night, on May 28, it existed in a kind of critical outer darkness. The custodians of Verdi’s sacred flame pronounced Visconti’s treatment irreverent, even vulgar. Maria had her detractors, too, but they were drowned in the general adulation for her performance, summed up by the critic of 24
Ore
: “This aristocrat of the dramatic and vocal art was able to return to the opera its aura of fervor, its atmosphere of throbbing anguish of which the director was determined to rob the performance.”

Maria’s backstage detractors were much harder to handle. Through the long weeks of rehearsals, Giuseppe di Stefano, who sang Violetta’s lover, Alfredo, had been storing resentment against her. For him singing was singing and all the time she and Visconti were spending over gestures, movements and expressions amounted to nothing but tedious horseplay. When Visconti began coaxing him and Maria into the intimate love-play he had conceived for Violetta and Alfredo, di Stefano could take no more. He started turning up late and sometimes not turning up at all. “It’s lack of respect for me, lack of regard, and
also
for you!” fumed Maria. Visconti was much more philosophical. “I don’t give a damn if the fool comes late,” he told her. “We’ll act out his scenes together; worse for him if he doesn’t learn anything.” But the tension between di Stefano and Maria was rising and no one needed clairvoyance to predict that at some point it would have to break. That point came on the first night.

At Giulini’s suggestion, Maria took a solo curtain call. Di Stefano boiled over, and before anyone realized what was going on, he had thrown aside Alfredo’s clothes, walked out of the production and was soon fleeing Milan. There were three more performances left, and Giacinto Prandelli took over the role of Alfredo. Di Stefano, however, was by no means the only one who resented Maria’s blazing success, the adulation showered upon her and the unchallenged way in which, especially after Tebaldi’s departure, she reigned at La Scala and held court at the Biffi Scala. The ranks of the resentful were further swollen by Maria’s attitude which assumed that the world was a hostile place. It was as if she was seeking—however unconsciously—confirmation of her instinctive mistrust of everyone. Such confirmation was not hard to find, especially on June 5, the third performance of
La Traviata
, when Maria’s “
Sempre libera
” was interrupted by heckling and whistling designed to throw her off course. “
Sempre libera
” came to an ominous halt and it took Maria several moments to regain her composure and complete the aria. She demanded a solo curtain call, and came out determined to defy her enemies, only to find herself overwhelmed instead by the passionate welcome of her friends.

But the resentment Maria aroused was by no means the creation of her own mind.
La Scala
magazine devoted an entire editorial to it soon after the eruption of hostilities during
Traviata
. “No doubt Callas has many enemies. First of all, her colleagues who are convinced that to be a native Italian and endowed by nature with a lovely voice is all that is needed. They are only concerned with the emission of notes and with singing in the manner of fifty years ago, without ever letting their eyes stray from the conductor’s baton. These people, who are organically incapable of sacrifice and effort, who owe nothing to study and all to nature and accident, accuse Maria Callas of aggressiveness because, as the result of much sacrifice and effort, she is vocally and physically able to sing and interpret everything. Shall we say that the clamorous recognition and her own striking personality will rise above the attacks? Is this a consolation for Callas? One thing is certain: the price to pay for separation from the herd is high.”

While isolation is by no means a condition of greatness, Maria did feel isolated from colleagues and the world around her, and often, despite the echoes of clamorous applause in her ears and the presence of Meneghini by her side, she felt very alone. So it was with a child’s joy that she welcomed her old teacher, Elvira de Hidalgo, to Milan. Elvira had been teaching at the conservatory of Ankara in Turkey for the previous few years and arrived in Milan at the beginning of August to spend a holiday with her brother Luis who was living there, and with Maria. Pupil and teacher had kept in constant touch through all these years and now at last Elvira could hear the transformed Maria sing, accompany her on her shopping expeditions down Via Monte Napoleone, advise her on the final touches for her new house. Maria was at the time recording
Madama Butterfly
, with Karajan conducting and Nicolai Gedda as Pinkerton. For the recording of
Rigoletto
that followed, the magical trio of Callas, Gobbi and di Stefano were once again together; and once again Serafin was conducting. Maria had a selectively short memory and, now that di Stefano had charmed his way back into her life, his operatic walkout seemed to belong to a very distant past.

It was a hectic summer but not too hectic for numerous fittings at Madame Biki’s. The latest Dior originals were added to the latest Biki creations, with the result that Maria’s autumn 1955 collection was her most glamorous and eye-catching so far. But it was still a rather strait-jacketed elegance, with plenty of severe suits and tailored dresses. On September 24, Maria, wearing one of Biki’s creations, arrived in Berlin. La Scala had reassembled the principals of the original 1954
Lucia
for two performances as part of the Berlin Festival. Karajan was conducting and it was confidently expected that the 1954 Callas-Karajan triumph in Milan would be repeated in Berlin. What happened, though, far surpassed expectations. Hundreds spent the night before the first performance outside the opera house, both performances having been immediately sold out and, as the first night was broadcast, the enthusiasm, the ovations and even the stamping of feet are forever preserved on tape.

It was a triumphant ending to an evening that had begun on a note of panic. Meneghini’s plane from Milan had been delayed and, minutes before the curtain rose, Maria was still nervously pacing up and down her dressing room, full of superstitious anxiety at the thought that Meneghini would not be there in time for the start. “I can’t sing, I can’t sing if he is not here . . .” she had been mumbling, more to herself than to anyone else. The opera house officials were themselves pacing nervously up and down, getting more anxious by the minute. Scouts had been posted everywhere to give the signal as soon as Meneghini’s form darkened the door. A couple of minutes after the curtain was due to rise Meneghini appeared; never before had so many people longed to see him so much. He was at once escorted to his box, Maria caught a glimpse of him from behind the curtain, and the performance could begin.
Avanti maestro
! At the end of the performance there was a reception at the Italian embassy. Efi Zaccaria remembers Maria hovering around the platters of Italian delicacies, frequently darting but rarely settling.

Back in Milan at the beginnning of October, Maria could look at 1955 as her greatest year so far. Yet some of the greatest triumphs of the year were still ahead of her. They took place in Chicago, where she opened the season in
I Puritani
on October 31. Renata Tebaldi followed on November 1 with
Aida
. They shared the star dressing room but, even though it was Maria’s suggestion to invite Tebaldi, the schedule was carefully arranged so that they never met. Maria followed Renata with
Il Trovatore
, Renata replied with
Bohème
, and Maria came back with
Butterfly
. “I don’t ever want to hear her Butterfly again,” said someone after the opening night; “I’ll end up liking this dreadful opera.”

There was no time off for Maria in Chicago. She had chosen to be on display the whole time; when she was not actually singing, she attended cocktail parties, luncheon parties, dinner parties, or she met the press, smiling for photographers, praising the opera management, praising the town or ostentatiously applauding Tebaldi’s Aida and Tebaldi’s Mimi. Tebaldi did not reciprocate the accolade but the town more than reciprocated what Maria had been giving them. As Roger Dettmer, music critic of the
Chicago American
, put it: “The town, we all know, has been Callas-crazy for more than a year, and none has been more demented than I. In the proper role and in good voice, I adore the woman; I am a slave in her spell.”

And Maria became a slave to her slaves. Never before had an entire town unanimously treated her as a combination of queen, sorceress and divinity. And never before had she put so much energy into gaining and maintaining the public’s favor; never before had she made such a consistent effort to be universally “nice” and universally liked. “Fame,” she once said, “is a boomerang.” The approval and adulation that fame brought her had become a subtle trap. Because Maria’s store of self-approval remained, most of the time, very low, she came to rely almost entirely on the approval of others. So the woman who had cast her spell on so many was in even greater need of them than they were of her. The greater the adulation the tighter the trap, especially since, as she said herself, she was plagued with endless doubt and feelings of unworthiness. “Even when people look at me with obvious affection, that makes me twice as angry. You think, ‘these people are looking at you in admiration—why should they? I don’t deserve it.’ ” The less she felt that she deserved admiration the more she was determined to present to the world a version of herself that was deserving. But excessive concern with presentation and effect is bound to boomerang too: “Misrepresentation, as I have found to my cost,” she said a few years after Chicago, “can happen only too easily.”