Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend by Arianna Huffington Page B
Authors: Arianna Huffington
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revealed my husband’s character. I would give my life for him immediately and joyfully. From that moment on I understood that I could never find a more generous man. . . . If Battista had wanted, I would have abandoned my career without regret, because in a woman’s life love is more important than artistic triumphs.”
That was, of course, after the artistic triumphs had been achieved. On August 3, 1947, as Maria was waiting in the wings for her Italian debut, there was no room for anything except the prospect of the artistic triumph ahead. It was not to be. She hobbled around with a bandaged leg, self-conscious and suddenly unsure of the enormous stage. The reviewers praised “the vibrant quality and easy production of her high notes” and “the timbre of a most moving and individual quality,” but this was hardly the praise from which artistic triumphs are made. There was not even the offer of a return visit to Verona. Yet Maria, drawing heavily on Serafin’s trust and Meneghini’s devotion, sang the remaining five Giocondas and then stayed in Verona confidently waiting for the next big opportunity.
Maria, who had said no even when she could not afford it, could now, thanks to the fact that Meneghini had become her unofficial sponsor, be selective without hardship. So the first offer—an invitation to sing Gioconda in Vigevano, near Milan—was turned down. The prospect of an interview at La Scala was looming up and Maria trusted the future enough to say no to this run-of-the-mill production in an unimportant town. But the immediate future turned out to be bleaker than Maria and her protector had expected. Mario Labroca, assistant director of La Scala, heard Maria sing and muttered something about vocal defects and something else about the possibility of her taking part in La Scala’s forthcoming production of Un Ballo in Maschera , but a week went by and no more mutterings were heard.
That first week of enforced leisure was largely spent wandering around Verona, indulging in an activity the pleasures and agonies of which she was just discovering—shopping. While Maria was discovering shopping, Meneghini was discovering that shopping with his future wife would reduce anyone to blasphemy or tears. She was an undecided and exasperating shopper, and even when someone else was paying, she found herself brought to a standstill by the difference between the price she thought something should cost and the invariably higher price it did cost. Later, when she had more money than she could possibly have spent in her lifetime, her greatest joy was to go to Woolworth’s or Macy’s and devote a whole morning or even a whole day to buying bric-a-brac—a lemon squeezer, a potato peeler, a new kind of coffee grinder. On one occasion in 1962, Maria, lunching at Claridge’s with her friend Edith Gorlinsky, spread out the entire loot of her morning’s Woolworth’s expedition on the table and, pushing the china and the crystal to one side, proudly displayed the knickknacks.
The novelty and pleasure of Verona, shopping and Meneghini’s company could not sustain her for more than a week. With Meneghini in tow, she was off to Milan to begin once again the round of agents. For the next two months, and despite Serafin’s lobbying on her behalf, it was as if Verona had never happened. Maria was beginning to realize, more fully than ever before, what an extraordinary departure she represented from the musical conventions of the time. “Immediately after my debut in Italy,” Maria said later, “I was not loved that much. . . . No agent would give me a job. . . . I was something new to listen to and they disliked anything that took them away from tradition.” She was later described by the Italian critic Teodoro Celli as “a star wandering into a planetary system not its own.” She would have been much more at home in the nineteenth century than she was in the twentieth. In the century of Pasta and Malibran,
That was, of course, after the artistic triumphs had been achieved. On August 3, 1947, as Maria was waiting in the wings for her Italian debut, there was no room for anything except the prospect of the artistic triumph ahead. It was not to be. She hobbled around with a bandaged leg, self-conscious and suddenly unsure of the enormous stage. The reviewers praised “the vibrant quality and easy production of her high notes” and “the timbre of a most moving and individual quality,” but this was hardly the praise from which artistic triumphs are made. There was not even the offer of a return visit to Verona. Yet Maria, drawing heavily on Serafin’s trust and Meneghini’s devotion, sang the remaining five Giocondas and then stayed in Verona confidently waiting for the next big opportunity.
Maria, who had said no even when she could not afford it, could now, thanks to the fact that Meneghini had become her unofficial sponsor, be selective without hardship. So the first offer—an invitation to sing Gioconda in Vigevano, near Milan—was turned down. The prospect of an interview at La Scala was looming up and Maria trusted the future enough to say no to this run-of-the-mill production in an unimportant town. But the immediate future turned out to be bleaker than Maria and her protector had expected. Mario Labroca, assistant director of La Scala, heard Maria sing and muttered something about vocal defects and something else about the possibility of her taking part in La Scala’s forthcoming production of Un Ballo in Maschera , but a week went by and no more mutterings were heard.
That first week of enforced leisure was largely spent wandering around Verona, indulging in an activity the pleasures and agonies of which she was just discovering—shopping. While Maria was discovering shopping, Meneghini was discovering that shopping with his future wife would reduce anyone to blasphemy or tears. She was an undecided and exasperating shopper, and even when someone else was paying, she found herself brought to a standstill by the difference between the price she thought something should cost and the invariably higher price it did cost. Later, when she had more money than she could possibly have spent in her lifetime, her greatest joy was to go to Woolworth’s or Macy’s and devote a whole morning or even a whole day to buying bric-a-brac—a lemon squeezer, a potato peeler, a new kind of coffee grinder. On one occasion in 1962, Maria, lunching at Claridge’s with her friend Edith Gorlinsky, spread out the entire loot of her morning’s Woolworth’s expedition on the table and, pushing the china and the crystal to one side, proudly displayed the knickknacks.
The novelty and pleasure of Verona, shopping and Meneghini’s company could not sustain her for more than a week. With Meneghini in tow, she was off to Milan to begin once again the round of agents. For the next two months, and despite Serafin’s lobbying on her behalf, it was as if Verona had never happened. Maria was beginning to realize, more fully than ever before, what an extraordinary departure she represented from the musical conventions of the time. “Immediately after my debut in Italy,” Maria said later, “I was not loved that much. . . . No agent would give me a job. . . . I was something new to listen to and they disliked anything that took them away from tradition.” She was later described by the Italian critic Teodoro Celli as “a star wandering into a planetary system not its own.” She would have been much more at home in the nineteenth century than she was in the twentieth. In the century of Pasta and Malibran,
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