The performance was recorded, and right from the start we can feel the total success with which Maria created theater through her voice. The chorus of praise was unremitting and Maria fed ravenously off it, but the applause, the praise and the adulation were nothing compared to the offstage triumph: La Scala was at her feet, and the terms of her contract included three leading roles, thirty appearances during the initial season and 300,000 lire, practically $500, a performance. This was the laying on of hands, and Maria was in ecstasy. Whatever glories she had gained outside Italy and however distinguished some of the other Italian opera houses, La Scala offered the ultimate endorsement.
Maria’s last performance in Vespri Siciliani was on June 5. Four days later, still in Florence but at the more intimate Teatro della Pergola, Maria was opening in her first world premiere: Haydn’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Written for London in 1791, it had waited 160 years for Maria and its first performance. The classical style of Haydn was a long way from Verdi’s Sicily, and Euridice had little to do with Elena, but Maria managed the eighteenth-century style as though it was all she had ever sung. Her versatility had by now become legendary among the cognoscenti all over the world, and it was highlighted in America by her first recordings. As her fame spread across the Atlantic, The New York Times carried a review of Maria in Orfeo under the title “New Yorker excels.”
Athens, New York and Verona were all claiming her for their own. The Scala contract had been signed and Covent Garden was trying to get her to sing Norma in 1952. Sander Gorlinsky, who was ultimately to become her exclusive agent, arrived in Verona to make the arrangements. He found Meneghini in one of his “catch me if you can” moods and left empty-handed. “I nearly gave up,” he remembers. “But I decided to go back to Verona and make another effort. When I arrived at her apartment she was in bed and Mr. Meneghini mercifully out. ‘I’d love to do it,’ she said, and signed the contract right there in the apartment, at a fee of two hundred and fifty pounds a night.”
Full of confidence and expectations, Maria left with Meneghini for Mexico. Her father was already there, waiting for them. George Callas’ two week stay in Mexico was an overwhelming experience. Not only was Maria the heroine of the Mexican public, she was also given every possible accolade by the press and every honor and hospitality by both the cultural elite and the local socialites. All George Callas’ sober reservations about having his daughter on the stage evaporated in the general intoxication. He and Meneghini, close in age and similar in their somber disposition, were getting on beautifully together. Their shared pride in Maria was powerful enough to overcome the father’s lack of Italian and the husband’s tortured English. Maria had little time to spend with her father in between performances and rehearsals, but enjoyed having him by her side, and knowing that he was there in the darkened auditorium, proudly watching and applauding her. The more her resentment toward her mother increased, the more love and warmth she felt for a father who had never made any demands or burdened her with his expectations.
After three performances of Aida with Mario Del Monaco, who went on heroically oversinging his way through the opera up to and including the dying fall of the final scene, Maria sang her first Mexican Traviata with Cesare Valletti. At her husband’s insistence, she was paid in gold dollars in Mexico, which Meneghini, like a pirate, put in a little bag bought especially for the purpose.
The Mexican visit was an unqualified triumph, but Maria left for her next stop, São Paulo in Brazil, exhausted, her legs massively swollen and her nerves strained to breaking point. The wear and tear of traveling and performing, the petty annoyances and vexations on-and offstage, and lately an unusual loss of sleep—all took their toll. But that was not all. More exhausting than the irritations and the work of the present were the replays of her past—past mistakes, past performances, past judgments—that haunted her. Even more exhausting were her fears for the future. La Scala had surrendered, but that was as much a source of anxiety for Maria as a source of exultation. The higher she climbed, the greater the reputation she had to maintain, the greater became the burden of past and future that she had to carry. The past was no more, the future was yet to come, but Maria went on sacrificing the joy of the present to that unborn future and that dead past. It is small wonder she was exhausted.
She had to cancel all her scheduled performances of Aida in São Paulo and only appeared in Traviata, alternating as Violetta with Renata Tebaldi. The cancellation of Aida brought the first personally critical comments from the South American press, which also carried some very unflattering things that Maria was supposed to have said about Tebaldi’s Violetta. Had she said them? Had they been distorted? From now on, in the reporting of Maria’s sayings and doings in the press, these were to become staple questions. However much Callas lovers might have wished it otherwise, the only correct answer would almost invariably have to be: yes, the press did exaggerate what she said and did, but yes, she had said it or done it.
Maria arrived in Rio de Janeiro from São Paulo to be greeted with a press full of Tebaldi’s Violetta. Renata had opened in Rio a week earlier and had been wildly acclaimed, as was Maria when she opened in Norma at the Teatro Municipal on September 12. Parallel triumphs simply increased the tension. Tension between prima donnas was nothing new in operatic history, but there was a new element here, not easy to define but unmistakably present: it was the extent of the public’s identification and involvement. Maria’s comments, inflated by the press, made battle inevitable. Lines were drawn and positions openly taken. The musical world—and by no means the musical world alone—was beginning to be divided into Tebaldists and Callasites.
The stage for open hostilities was set, and the opportunity was provided by a benefit concert at the Teatro Municipal in Rio on September 14. Both Renata and Maria were there to take part in it, Maria to sing “Sempre libera” from Traviata, Renata to sing the “Ave Maria” from Otello. Maria sang, took her curtain calls and withdrew. Renata, carried away by the tumultuous applause she received, gave not one but two encores. There had been no previous agreement regarding encores, so Renata justified them as a response to the audience’s enthusiasm. Maria knew better. Harsh, angry words were exchanged backstage and diplomatic relations were broken off. But it was not easy to sever relations when they had to go on working closely together. Maria and Renata had plenty of opportunities, both professional and social, to test their tempers. Sometimes they managed to keep them, but more often they failed. A few days before Maria was due to sing Tosca they rather spectacularly failed when an after-dinnner discussion threatened to turn into a fishwives’ brawl.
Despite all her success, Maria still saw herself as snatching victory from hostile elements, and found her imagination increasingly peopled by enemies. At this time Renata led the parade, but soon she would be supplanted in Maria’s Enemies List by someone else. At the end of the opening night of Tosca in Rio, Meneghini burst into her dressing room with rumors that an anti-Callas plan was afoot at the opera house. Admittedly he was rather given to arriving in her dressing room with news of this kind, but on this occasion he was followed a few moments later by a messenger from the director of the opera house, asking her to come to his office. She went, determined to raise hell and ready with all the complaints that she had about inadequate rehearsal facilities and the rumors that were circulating. Before she could open her mouth she was formally informed by Barreto Pinto, the director, that due to what he described as the extremely unfavorable reactions of the audience to her Tosca, her contract was terminated. Whether it was through luck, her instinct for survival or a sudden aptitude for diplomacy, Maria remained perfectly cool until Pinto had finished. Then in a very businesslike manner, she reminded him of his contractual obligations. She insisted on being paid for the second Tosca that he would not allow her to sing and on singing the two remaining Traviatas. Pinto was furious but he had no option but to concede.
Maria’s replacement in Tosca was none other than Tebaldi. Maria was convinced th
at fate and coincidence had nothing to do with it; she openly accused Renata of having been behind Pinto’s decision to sack her. She was hurt, and made her accusation on suspicion rather than on evidence. The evidence, as far as it goes, tends to exonerate Tebaldi, but by that stage Maria was too distraught to be much concerned with evidence or even truth. Traviata was a huge success, but there was already open war between Pinto and Maria. He was so totally in the grip of his petty, unaccountable hatred for her that when she walked into his office to receive her fee before leaving, he jeered at her: “So you want money on top of glory, eh?” At this point the anger that had been coiled within Maria for the past few weeks could no longer be contained. Beside herself with fury, she seized the inkstand from Pinto’s desk and was about to fling it at him when a secretary rushed forward and snatched it from her hand. There was no bloodshed and no one was hurt, but by the time word of the incident had gone the rounds of the international opera houses, Maria might as well have stabbed Pinto with Tosca’s dagger.
All these explosions, conflicts and increasingly public personal dramas were abetted throughout the traumatic South American trip by a chorus of one: Battista Meneghini. Occasionally when Maria raged he pacified her, when she sulked he rallied her, but more often he inflamed her anger and resentment. Titta may have thought his intentions were unimpeachable, but there was plenty of malice seeking an outlet underneath his rather bland exterior. His wife’s enemies, real or imagined, were the nearest channels. His total identification with Maria’s professional interests at least saved her from being on the receiving end of his ill-nature—so long as she continued to put her career first. Meneghini was a born manager, and for the time being what Maria wanted was to be efficiently managed. And that she was. No opportunity to advance her career was lost.
On their way back to Italy, Battista had arranged for them to stop at Idlewild Airport so they could talk with Dario Soria, head of Cetra Records in New York, about the possibilities of a long-term contract. Maria was still on trial in America, but from reports that had reached him and from the few recordings that he had heard, Soria already knew that Cetra needed Maria more than Maria needed Cetra. During their airport talk, with Maria at her most professional, confident and businesslike, he was more convinced than ever. The contract with Cetra, stipulating the recording of three complete operas in 1952, was soon signed.
Maria returned to Italy, but South America, and especially Rio, was still very much with her. The tour had been a psychologically charged sequence of events of an emotional intensity far beyond its intrinsic importance. She longed to command her mind to forget Rio, but how does one command the mind to be still? The memories rankled, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, and there were moments of acute anguish as 1951 neared its end and Maria was about to enter her year of marvels—a year in which she was to ride with a tide of unparalleled success.
7
MARIA’S TWENTY-EIGHTH BIRTH-day found her at the Grand Hotel in Milan, where Verdi lived for years and where he died. On the Via San Raffaele, a few minutes’ walk from La Scala, the Grand Hotel became Maria’s home in Milan. The official opening of La Scala was on December 7, a few days after Maria’s birthday; and Ghiringhelli was determined that La Scala’s production of I Vespri Siciliani would ensure that the Florence production of the summer before was instantly forgotten. The opera had not been heard at La Scala since 1908, and everything had been done to ensure that the Milanese felt it had been worth reviving. Victor de Sabata, La Scala’s artistic director, was conducting, an excellent cast had been assembled, headed by Maria and Boris Christoff, and for once they all had ample rehearsal time. At rehearsals Maria was the wholly absorbed artist, and if sometimes she was as much absorbed in her own artistry as in the composer’s music, the Vespers fared none the worse for it. Everyone was impressed by her professionalism, overwhelmed by her dedication and stunned by her range. “My God,” recalled a member of the chorus, “she came onstage sounding like our deepest contralto, Cloe Elmo. Before the evening was over, she took a high E-flat, and it was twice as strong as Toti Dal Monte’s!”
Maria herself had to make an effort not to be overwhelmed by the occasion; but it was not easy. She was surrounded by people for whom grand opera was a religion, Milan its Holy City and an opening night at La Scala the most sacred festival in the calendar. Many of the faithful were swollen with proprietorial pride, even though for most of them their only connection with La Scala was that they lived in the same city. But opera was their life, and legend had it that if ever a luckless singer failed to strike a top note, the gallery would join in by chanting the whole aria as it should have been sung. By 1951, they may not have been able to sing the aria correctly, but they were perfectly capable of whistling the sinner offstage, especially if he or she was a foreigner. Music making was a holy business and meddling with it was rarely welcomed. Stendhal had summed up this attitude over a century earlier: “No truly honest observer, venturing into Italy from abroad, could dare for one instant to deny the hopeless absurdity of presuming to train singers or compose elsewhere than under the shadow of Vesuvius.” Very little had changed by Maria’s time.
The glittering first-night audience was cautiously expectant. Maria’s fame had preceded her, but it was a chrysalid fame. The Scala audience knew it was up to them to turn it into an internationally radiant butterfly. At the end of the first night, Maria knew that La Scala had surrendered—but not quite, not with the completeness that would reverberate around the world. If the surrender was not total, still the applause which burst forth at the end of the bolero opening the last act was an indication of the enthusiasm that Maria had stirred among the Milanese. The critical reaction summed up in Corriere della Sera clearly echoed that enthusiasm: “The miraculous throat of Maria Meneghini Callas . . . the prodigious extension of her tones, their phosphorescent beauty and her technical agility which is more than rare, it is unique.”
I Vespri was followed by I Puritani at the Teatro Comunale in Florence, and by more critical superlatives. But more moving and important for Maria than reading adulatory words in cold print the morning after was the live adulation of her audiences on the night. At the end of Puritani they shouted, stamped and clamored for her in curtain call after curtain call. And the orchestra, despite the legendary indifference of orchestras to singers of all kinds, stood in the pit applauding with at least as much passion as the audience. Soon these demonstrations became the talk of the Italian musical world: “Not since Toscanini . . . ,” whispered the lay connoisseurs. And the critics confirmed it: “Not since Toscanini.”
Almost anything she wanted seemed within her grasp now. Two weeks into 1952, she sang Norma at La Scala. The production was cobwebbed and the scenery dated from 1931, but Maria, according to Musical America, “electrified the audience by her very presence even before singing a note.” She sang eight Normas and in between, whether at the Grand Hotel or at the opera house, in her dressing room or her bedroom, she worked on her first (and, as it turned out, last) Mozart heroine: Constanze in Die Entfühurung aus dem Serail. It was a part that made tremendous demands on Maria’s stamina, range and agility: in the first aria alone, she was required to touch over twenty high Cs and eleven high Ds. It took a great deal out of Maria and she felt that it gave her very little back.
She mastered all the technical difficulties and received unanimous admiration and clamorous ovations, but she never sang another Mozart opera. “Most of Mozart’s music is dull,” she said once at a public round table at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. And at one of her master classes there, the same instinctive reaction was wrapped in the language of musical diplomacy. “Mozart,” she told a student soprano, “is often done on the tips of the toes, with too much fragility. It should be sung with the same frankness you sing Trovatore with.” Maria, who more than any other singer this century had dared portray in all their darkness man’s most primitive emotions, found the emotions of Mozart’s music too contained, and she even found it
hard to respond to the deeper harmony that is at the soul of Mozart’s music.
Maria sang “Martern aller Arten,” the most famous coloratura aria in the opera, twice again in concert—once in San Remo in 1954, and once in 1957, as a showpiece for the gala inaugural concert of the Dallas Civic Opera. She may have called Mozart’s music dull, but the passion with which she invested the aria belies the claim. The 1957 concert itself was not recorded, but its rehearsal was, and it is a fascinating document of Callas’ generosity at rehearsals. She begins at half-voice, but the emotion in the music soon engulfs her and she sings the entire program unerringly with the full intensity of a performance.
Maria Callas Page 12
