“There were days when Callas had the impression that performing an aria in public requires inhuman forces. That it was beyond her abilities”

Venice, 1957. Maria Callas is the greatest opera singer of her time, but the artistic perfection she embodies on stage is starting to take its toll. Her wonderful voice refuses to obey her, and the exhausted artist dreams of a respite – which, however, is not allowed by the opera world, nor her husband and manager Meneghini. Her life is entirely devoted to her career, there is no place for her as a woman in it. At one of the parties, Maria meets the shipowner Aristotle Onassis – a handsome Greek millionaire. Against all odds, they fall in love with each other. In the 1960s, they are considered the perfect couple. Until Onassis recognizes another icon of those times … Below we present an excerpt from the novel “Maria Callas and the Voice of the Heart”.

Michelle Marly, “Maria Callas and the Voice of the Heart”, trans. Urszula Pawlik – an excerpt from the book

The sea was as smooth as Lake Garda in spring. The water glistened and turned a dark saphir color in the places where the underwater, seaweed-covered rocks had bulged. On this summer morning, the cloudless sky was as deep a shade of blue as if it had been painted by Uranus himself. Even the smallest cloud did not disturb the perfect color. Above the water – the one-of-a-kind dizzying ultramarine – towered the shore of the island of Skorpios, topped with dark cypress trees.

The gentle slopes of the mountains, shimmering with all shades of green, could be seen in the background. Thousands of young trees, planted by Arist in the place of the forest which the Venetians had cut into the trunk almost five hundred years ago, leaving only bare rocks, stretched their branches towards the sun. It goes without saying that the afforestation of this area was not only the result of his work. However, it was he who first plunged the shovel into the ground, giving beautiful nature a chance to revive. For long periods of time, he would go ashore every day, where he spent days with architects and laborers, working with them on this project, stripped to the waist, and discussing professional topics.

Are nature-loving people not said to have a good heart and live in harmony with nature, which is their best feature?

As Maria, lost in thought, marveled at the forest that stretched to the horizon, at a great cost, she suddenly remembered the saying. Did the owner of the island she was looking at actually have this character trait, or did he want to show the world that he was able to control nature by recreating a forest that had been cut down centuries ago? Just as he tried to bend almost all people to his will.

In his own way, Aristotle Onassis also subjugated Mary, who succumbed to his charm and charismatic personality, believing that the lover had good sides. That’s why she put up with his moods and tolerated the affairs that happened to him from time to time. After all, she knew that he never wanted to hurt her on purpose, only to triumph and prove himself to himself. Some of these women were just a trophy for him at a time when sexuality was becoming less and less taboo. Maria tolerated these adventures with a smile on her face, well aware of how important it was for him to make impressions on others – no matter what kind and in what field. Aristo wanted to be not only the richest but also the most admired man in the world. Perhaps he did not have a good heart at all, but only an over-exaggerated ego and a highly complicated self-esteem. In any case, he had something that connected them more than she wished.

– I heard that Pier Paolo is going to make a film based on the myth of Medea …

His friend’s voice made an impression of the soft splash of water in the pool aboard the anchor yacht off the coast of Skorpios. The blue sky was reflected in the blue-green water, giving a specific shade to the mosaic at the bottom – a faithful reproduction of an acrobatic dance with a bull from the palace of Minos in Knossos. The electrically driven fountains at the edge of the pool were programmed so that they sprayed water at regular intervals, and its tiny drops, like a fine mist, splashed on the yacht’s superstructures.

Stretched out in a deck chair next to Maria, Larry had been saying something for some time that she only listened to with one ear. In fact, she hadn’t the faintest idea of ​​what her old friend was actually talking about. It was probably something brilliant and humorous. Lawrence Kelly was a co-founder of many great musical theaters in the United States and has accompanied her career since her first great success overseas thirteen years ago.

Impresario continued to perform well. He was much shorter than Tall Maria, but it didn’t matter, as it did with Arist. Like her lover, Larry, a leading figure in the opera houses across the Atlantic, was gifted with great charisma.

“Until now, no one has sung the Medea part as beautifully as you,” he continued, in the meantime, giving the impression that he wasn’t going to finish and didn’t need to take a breath at least once during the whole speech. – That’s why you should apply for the main role …

“I don’t think you can put a play on screen,” she interjected indiscriminately, finally wanting to break the flow of his words.

Larry wasn’t that easily stopped, however.

– After all, Franco Zeffirelli just brilliantly filmed Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. – He did not give up.

Maria sat up in the sun lounger and pushed her glasses over her thick black hair.

“It’s not the same as staging an opera,” she said firmly. As a rule, she hated opposition, which happened all too often on this voyage. It wasn’t the only thing that put her in a bad mood, anyway. The heat was taking its toll on her, which – as she explained to herself – was a reason for her bad mood. But even more than the scorching sun, Aristo irritated her, which she refused to admit even to herself. Her nerves were so tense that she reacted to the words of her faithful friend more sharply than she had intended. – The music scene and the screen are mutually exclusive. Enough.

She sank down on the deck chair again and closed her eyes, which strangely started to bake as she realized she shouldn’t have jumped on Larry so much. Not that nice, extremely dedicated man who in no way deserved such rude treatment.

The real reason for her excessive nervousness was the bad mood of her lover. His distraction, swaggering, lack of tact and rudeness with which he treated Maria in the last days. And she believed that the disputes that had erupted between them in recent months were largely a thing of the past. For a long time it seemed that the old harmony had reigned between them …

– You should practice your voice regularly again.

– What? Maria looked up.

– I can arrange a performance in the USA at any time. Even the entire tour if you want. Your return to the stage will be greeted with enthusiasm.

As if she didn’t know it.

“I’m on vacation now,” she said evasively.

She did not want to admit that she had neglected practicing recently, but – of course – she did not give up trying to restore her voice to its old, good form. For months she had been recording her singing on an audio tape, and then compared the effect with the recordings from old records. She hoped that in this way she would find the reason why she was unable to sing the treble in the tricolor octave. Before she, to a greater or lesser extent, quit her public appearances, she had caused a scandal several times, which was caused by the breakdown of her voice during the performance of the arias.

She was in a constant swing of form – up and down. At one point, she realized that her voice was almost slanted. And when she noticed over time that the audience no longer received her performances with the same enthusiasm as before, she withdrew from the stage and plunged into the extravagant, hectic life of the international elite, feeling shipwrecked at the same time. Like Odysseus having endless adventures on his way home, both uplifting and deadly. The stage was her homeland. And if she wanted to return to her, she probably had to overcome obstacles first, like an ancient heroine. There were days when she had the impression that performing an aria in public requires inhuman strength. That she is beyond her means.

Larry was kind of right. It was true that she had always wanted to be just a wife and housewife, caring for her husband and taking her dog for walks. But at the same time, she also wanted to sing. Sing again, for singing was the only way to drown out her inner anxiety and deeply hidden worries. However, she had no idea how to train her voice to return to her former form, or whether she should be afraid that her lover might leave her. But she wasn’t going to confide in her problems until she dealt with them. Neither Larry nor anyone else.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she promised, flashing him a smile. – In this heat I am not able to discuss any serious topic.

To make her words credible, she stretched her hand over to the pile of illustrated magazines the flight attendant had placed on the table next to the sunbed. At random she pulled out one of them and began to mechanically browse through them, ignoring the headlines, articles and photos informing about the impending wedding of the Norwegian heir to the throne, Prince Harald, with non-aristocratic Sonja Haraldsen, Frank Sinatra’s divorce from Mia Farrow, and the new fashion trends for fall, presented by skinny British model Twiggy. None of the topics she described interested her. It was only the recipe page that caught her attention. Eating had always been a spiritual comfort to her. Even now, although for over fifteen years she has eaten mainly with her eyes. Thanks to a strict diet, she kept perfect dimensions, boasting a shapely figure. In fact, her stomach was eating nothing but crumbs. And so has her heart for some time.