Books: The Grandest Diva

(2 of 2)

She became pregnant and wanted the child, but Onassis insisted on an abortion. It was a turning point. Sometimes the Christina sailed without her. Once, in 1963, Jackie and her sister Lee Radziwill cruised instead. The future could be read in what those ladies made off with: Lee a string of pearls, Jackie a massive diamond and ruby necklace.

The Kennedy-Onassis marriage was not a success. He continued to see Maria and, reports Biographer Arianna Stassinopoulos, just before he died in 1975, he hired Roy Conn to start divorce proceedings against Jackie. But the diva's happiness was over. An affair with Tenor Giuseppe di Stefano was doomed; the poor man could not match her memory of Onassis. She declined rapidly after several illnesses, and it was not really surprising when she died in Paris, at 54, living in comfort but alone.

Callas, the artist, is a respected but pale figure in this book. Nor is there convincing evidence to explain the major psychological puzzles of her life: the cruel loathing of her silly mother, her odd artistic decisions. But if Stassinopoulos, 30, is deficient as a biographer, she is a good reporter. The child of a business consultant in Athens, she went to Cambridge University in England. In writing Callas, her great break was the cooperation of the singer's godfather Leonidas Lantzounis. After he read a draft, he gave her the candid, affectionate letters that Callas had written him over many years. They are used as background, but one wishes that the author had quoted more.

Stassinopoulos is also good at interviewing sources and collecting anecdotes. When glaucoma was diagnosed and eyedrops required every two hours, Maria bought a tiny Louis XV timepiece that tinkled an alarm every two hours. Yet she loved nothing better than combing Woolworth's for such "bargains" as a lemon squeezer or potato peeler. A friend remembered a lunch at Claridges during which Maria proudly produced her latest finds. The Callas jealousy was legendary. The sight of her beloved Visconti, who was homosexual, merely talking with Leonard Bernstein sent her into a rage. Yet she did not always take herself seriously. At one of her classes, a student confessed to problems with "three or four notes." Replied the diva: "Likewise."

The foibles are fun; the gossip, especially about international high life, is en tertaining—and doubtless one reason why the book topped the British bestseller lists.

One longs, though, to hear more of Callas speaking on her art, for she said a great deal, especially in the 1971-72 master classes at Juilliard. Perhaps the cliché is correct: art is inscrutable. That may be the wisdom in a musing early in her career by Italian Conductor Nicola Rescigno: "It is a deep mystery why a girl born into a musically unsophisticated family, and raised in an atmosphere devoid of operatic tradition, should have been blessed with the ability to sing the perfect recitative."