Callas in Il barbiere di Siviglia II

“Una voce poco fa,” Rosina’s cavatina from Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, was a Callas favorite. It was part of her repertoire during her Greek years, and she sang it some twenty times in concert during the late 1950s—including the night of the 1958 Paris gala during which Aristotle Onassis reportedly resolved to win her.

While her staged performances as Rosina constituted the biggest flop of her career, Callas’s complete EMI set of Barbiere and this 1954 “Una voce poco fa,” recorded under the baton of Tullio Serafin, are among her very finest recordings, brimming with merriment and sparkling vocalism.

Today, her name day, we remember Maria Callas with this joyous performance.

Hear Maria Callas in other music by Rossini.

Maria Callas sings “Casta diva”

The video shows Maria Callas in the RAI studios of Rome on December 31, 1957, singing her signature aria, “Casta diva” from Bellini’s Norma.

This is roughly 48 hours before the so-called “Rome walkout” that effectively ended Callas’s career in Italy and probably contributed more than anything else to her premature withdrawal from the stage.

(Briefly, I am of the opinion that Callas grew increasingly unable to handle the nervous strain of appearing before a hostile press, and that her dismay at Meneghini’s real or perceived mismanagement of her career contributed in no small part to her leaving him for Aristotle Onassis. This is speculation, based on what evidence we have; and all of the people who could confirm or deny my conjectures are long dead. Yes, Callas was in vocal decline by the late 1950s, but her nervous exhaustion greatly amplified the problems with her voice. This post about Callas’s 1957 Ballo at La Scala allows you to read and hear more about why I believe this.)

Hear Maria Callas in other music by Bellini. (Some of the YouTube clips, alas, have been removed since I linked to them.)

Callas seen by Maraini II

Yesterday I brought you the first part of Dacia Maraini’s 2007 interview about Maria Callas. Here’s more from this interesting piece.

What was your relationship like?
She was reserved at first. Then, little by little, as she got to know me, she became affectionate. I remember her once confiding that she had always gotten everything wrong with men. She said that she had loved Onassis immensely, but that he had been brutal to her. Somewhat comically, she thought that she would convert Pasolini to heterosexuality. She was naïve and sometimes seemed like a little girl. Her love for jewels was that of a poor girl enchanted by a magic ring or dress.

What differences were there between her private behavior, with friends, and with the public?
There were enormous differences, if by “public” you mean opera audiences. She was free from uncertainty, shyness, fears; she was sure and sublime. But in private, with friends, she was awkward, though by nature she was a very controlled person, self-taught, who knew how to get by in life.

Tell us about the long trips that you took with Moravia, Pasolini, and Maria.
We took two long trips to Africa, both a month long, and one to Yemen. Wherever we went, Pasolini and Moravia would disappear when Maria was there. She was a queen, and that’s how they treated her. Heads of state came to greet her, planes and cars were put at her disposal. But she didn’t avail herself of them—on the contrary, she tended to resist getting involved with authorities.

She was used to luxury hotels, but she adapted even to hostels, which is what happened when we were travelling through central Africa in Land Rovers. We lodged where we could.

The funniest thing? Once, in a large hotel, I went up to tell her that dinner was ready, and I found her in a dressing gown, sitting in front of the radio. I thought that she was listening to an opera. To my surprise, she was listening, rapt, to one of Nilla Pizzi’s songs.

Callas tourism

Pilgrimage: A journey (usually of a long distance) made to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion; the action or practice of making such a journey.

Jared Paul Stern (oh dear) invites us to book passage for “a special Maria Callas Experience charter” this spring and summer on board the Christina O.

The yacht Christina, a floating palace of its day, belonged to Aristotle Onassis. Callas and Onassis reportedly became lovers on board in 1959. The boat changed hands several times after the tycoon’s death in 1975 and was renamed Christina O—eliding the name of Onassis’s daughter and the jaunty (scandalized?) nickname of his second wife—about ten years ago.

According to Wikipedia, she can be chartered for €45,000 to €65,000 a day.

Sean “Diddy” Combs recently cruised on the Christina O.

The more impecunious among us may prefer a tour of locations associated with Maria Callas in Verona (where she made her Italian début) and possibly also Zevio (where her husband had a family home) and Sirmione (where Callas and her husband owned a vacation home).

The site mentions a museum in Zevio displaying Callas memorabilia, “thousands of pictures, old records, magazines, dresses of the great singer.” As of late 2009, it was not yet open, though I may not have the latest information.

I offer you, as well, an article about Maria Callas and her dogs, with more than sixty photos, including the image you see here of Callas with her poodle Tea in Verona, c. 1954.

Callas and Omero Lengrini

In recent years, the most sensational trouvaille in the realm of Callas biographies—one now widely accepted as true—has come from Nicholas Gage.

In Greek Fire: The Story of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis (2000), Gage claims that on March 30, 1960, Callas gave birth to a “secret son” by Onassis, Omero Lengrini. (For Gage, “Lengrini” is the pseudonym under which Callas registered at hospital, while the name “Omero” commemorates an uncle of Onassis.) This child was supposedly conceived in August 1959, at the start of Callas’s relationship with Onassis.

According to Gage, Callas insisted that the child be delivered a month early by caesarean section to present Onassis (away on a cruise but due back in early April) “with a fait accompli.” The premature infant died within hours.

I’ve not arrived at a final conclusion, but Gage’s story has never made sense to me. He accepts Meneghini’s claim that Callas was in the early stages of menopause in 1957 and received a year-long series of injections to stave it off.

From there, Gage spins a long string of suppositions, starting with the notion that the injections “almost certainly” were estrogen hormones. Then, all emphasis added:

If Maria had been receiving these injections regularly for at least a year (and perhaps two) beginning in May 1957, then by the time she slept with Onassis in August of 1959, she might have been superfertile.

Gage asserts that a French journalist who interviewed Callas in person in what would have been her seventh month of pregnancy failed to notice her condition. He also claims, inaccurately, that after December 1959, Callas “would not appear in public for the next several months.” In fact, she was photographed on several high-profile occasions in both Milan and Paris as late as mid-February.

A certain “Nina Foresti,” whose site I commend to all, has the photos to demolish Gage’s tale. Nina also publishes Omero Lengrini’s complete birth certificate, which indicates that he was the son of one Mario Lengrini and spouse. (I’ve not yet verified the full birth certificate; Gage offers only partial documentation and claims that Omero’s parents were not identified.)

Nina’s site also includes embedded video of Callas, radiant and glamorous, arriving at the 1960 Cannes Festival, some six weeks after allegedly losing a nearly full-term baby.

Other evidence that argues against Gage’s account:

• Photographs from the sixth or seventh month of Callas’s supposed pregnancy show her as slim and wasp-waisted as ever—and the idea, put forth by Gage, that a singer’s strong abdominal muscles could hide an advanced pregnancy is ludicrous.
• In Gage’s book, Onassis’s former masseuse reports that Callas had a scar in the lower part of her abdomen. Gage presents this as evidence of a caesarean birth, but Callas’s 1948 appendectomy could have left such a scar.
• Gage surmises that Callas rushed the delivery because she “feared having [Onassis] see her swollen and nine months pregnant.” Yet the scar from a c. 1960 caesarean delivery itself would have been quite disfiguring.
• Many authors (Stassinopoulos, Petsalis-Diomidis, Gage himself) reproduce photographs of Callas wearing a bikini, long after the supposed birth, with no evidence of a caesarean scar.
• If Callas were intent on concealing a pregnancy, why on earth would she have chosen to give birth in Milan, where paparazzi followed her every move and camped out on her doorstep?
• Nina Foresti lists engagements for late 1960 that Callas negotiated during her supposed pregnancy and notes that she was back in the recording studio months after Omero Lengrini died. Nina concludes, and I concur: “If this woman gave birth to a son who died shortly thereafter… in light of what she undertook in those months [of 1960], she is not a courageous woman: She is a monster.”
• Finally, by all accounts, Callas wanted nothing more than a child. The idea that she would endanger her baby’s life for reasons of vanity is grotesque. (And what does it mean, to present Onassis “with a fait accompli”? That he might have pressured her to abort a nearly full-term fetus? That idea is both grotesque and hateful.)

I am not prepared to say that Callas never fell pregnant or never gave birth, only that Gage’s tale has more holes in it than Emmentaler. The one longtime Callas friend with whom I have discussed this subject mused that Callas, at some point, hypothetically, could have given birth, but knew nothing of the events related by Gage.

You can learn more about the Omero Lengrini controversy at the Divina Records site, where two articles by Brigitte Pantis argue strongly against the hypothesis that Omero Legrini was Callas’s son.

Callas remembered

Over the years, much ink has been spilled about the relationship between Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis. I believe that even today, moralistic outrage over Callas’s “scandalous” behavior motivates some part of the abuse still hurled at her.

It is interesting, then, to read this recollection of her by a Catholic priest—Father Vittricio Mabellini, associated with the Centro culturale francescano Rosetum of Milano, at which Callas cut the ribbon during the opening ceremony in 1957.

He took to visiting her home in via Buonarrotti.

Slowly, I began to understand why Maria Callas asked for my prayers with such great insistence and was so keen to confide in me: She was something of a prisoner in her own home, and no great atmosphere of affection reigned there. Her husband was 33 [actually, 26 or 27] years older than she, and their relationship was more formal and exterior than anything else.

She had a proud character, and I never saw her really happy. At most, a smile or a nod. In short, the air was heavy in that home. Let us not forget, then, that Maria Callas was a Greek woman, Mediterranean, thirsty for affection and true feelings.

I say these things not to take a certain position vis-à-vis this woman of whom so much has been said, for good and for ill. I am simply relating what were, at the time, my direct impressions.

From Ricordo di Maria Callas, Edizioni Rosetum (1992).