On July 22, 1959, the already famous Maria Callas arrived at the port of Monaco with her husband. She did it in a car that she had to drive in slowly to avoid running into any of the journalists crowded around her and the hundreds of fans reaching out to touch her. La Scala Mexico and her Norma, and the entire United States like Lucia di Lammermoor, have already surrendered to her. She was recognized all over the world, and her attractiveness left dozens of bouquets of flowers in her dressing rooms.

“La Callas managed to go far beyond the stage. Above her lies a living legend, as seductive as her over-the-top art. The journalists also rushed at her, freeing the intertwining of their cameras and their questions,” says the journalist. and writer Carmen Ro, what novel in Secret notebook of Maria Callas (Sphere of books) a vacation that began that day and changed the life of the soprano and, above all, her master.

Because Callas and her husband arrived at this port at the request of Aristotle Onassis. They were going on vacation in just over a month after years of performances, work, press and exhaustion. They did it on a tycoon’s yacht, with his wife and a guest even more famous than our protagonist: Winston Churchill. But what was supposed to mean the reunion of a married couple, rest and escape from the noise, turned into several weeks of betrayal, distance, screaming and divorce. In an absolute life change that intensified the great soprano’s Greek tragedy and led her to a place she thought was happy and which became hell.

But getting there was not easy. Onassis followed Callas from concert to concert for years and took a constant interest in her dressing room and getting to know her. He received it in 1957 at a party in Venice and from that moment until that day in June 1959 he never stopped sending her notes inviting her to go on vacation on his yacht, Christina. This ship was the symbol of the Greek tycoon, decorated with paintings by Miro and Renoir, and everyone from Greta Garbo to Rainier Monaco, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton and even Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe passed through it. He missed the Divine and didn’t stop until he got it.

“The Greek felt positively bewitched. From that moment on, he did not stop going to the opera house every day, where Maria Callas was. He went to see her sing, although he didn’t particularly like opera. He sent her bouquets of flowers. to the dressing room, always with a signed note inviting her aboard the Christina,” Ro writes in this novel.

She eventually agreed to walk away from everything and reunite with her husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini, 30 years her senior and who had given up intimacy for the past ten years to become her manager. But as soon as she arrived, Aristotle Onassis showed Callas his attention and left aside the man accompanying her. And also to his wife, who did not waste much time in removing her nails due to her husband’s extreme politeness and the reception she received from the soprano.

Although Ro does not mention him in his book, apparently Divina’s appearance on the yacht was the tycoon’s revenge on his wife Tina Livanos, who, tired of her husband’s infidelities, chose to sleep with another man, which he did. I didn’t want to forgive him. And also the fact that she, Tina, was already thinking about divorce during her vacation, and that the “Callas incident” was just the icing on the cake.

“He stole more than half of my money, transferring it all into his name from the moment we got married. I was a fool… all because I trusted him.”

MARIA CALLAS

But Callas was not something sporadic. That summer, while in the same boat with their partners, they experienced an uncontrollable passion that forced them to give up everything to be together. They ended their marriages, although she claimed that part of the divorce was because her husband cheated on her with bills and she lost most of her wealth. Even historian Lindsey Spence collects this evidence of the “Divine” in Starring Diva: The Secret Life of Maria Callas: “He stole more than half of my money, transferring everything into his name from the moment we got married. I was a fool… all because I trusted him.”

The book ends when they each step off the yacht on their own, only to meet again a few days later, their marriage now over and their future open. The press quickly found out about this, and they became the most persecuted couple. In one of his meetings with journalists, Onassis even said: “I am the most disgusting creature on earth, but a millionaire and a despot, so I do not renounce Mary.” It did, but it didn’t end the way they expected, or at least the way she expected.

Callas experienced fierce aggressiveness on the part of Onassis, endured betrayals, then it became known that they had a son, who died two hours later, while she was alone on a stretcher, and he disappeared. In addition, as Spence said in her book, Onassis drugged her in order to engage in sexual relations. “The information is taken from the diary of one of his closest friends,” said the historian, who suggested that the shipowner repeatedly abused his wife, in addition to physical violence. Even when the anger between them increased and she didn’t want to answer the phone, she left a note for her secretary: “I don’t want you to call me again to start torturing me again.”

But it was a torture that ended not for her, but for him. Onassis met Jacqueline Kennedy and the Greek woman faded into the background in a very short time. When Callas found out about this, her world collapsed; they say she even tried to commit suicide with the help of barbiturates. “I gave up an incredible career for him. I pray to God to help me get through this moment, but I shouldn’t hope too much, happiness is not for me. Is it too much to ask for the people around me to love me?” “, he wrote then.