Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis .

Maria Callas

AND

Aristotle Onassis

Maria Callas, the opera diva who died in 1977, was one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. More than any other prima donnaor actress, she brought to modern audiences the power and electricity of Ancient Greek drama. Opera-goers spoke of being frightened or confused when they first saw her perform.

Callas, also one of the most beautiful and well-dressed women of the 20th century, was not wise or lucky in love. One of her most foolish mistakes was her affair with Aristotle Onassis, the wealthy playboy and future husband of Jackie Kennedy. In this latest installment of my ongoing series on famous couples, I consider the myths and rumors that still surround their affair.

“Song is the noblest, the highest, manifestation of poetry,” Callas said. Among the many facets of Callas’s genius was her penetrating insight into her craft, which was so much more than simply song. “Art is the ability to express the life of emotion,” she said. And, “the art of music is so enormous that it can envelop you and keep you in a state of almost perpetual anxiety and torture. But it is not all in vain. It is an honour and great happiness to serve music with humility and love.”

Callas enveloped audiences, particularly in her roles as Norma in Bellini’s opera by the same name, Anna Boleyn in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata and as the title character of Puccini’s Tosca. Callas’ voice alone was not perfect, lacking the evenness or powerful high notes of others. The way she used it as an expressive tool was unparallelled.

 “It is not enough to have a beautiful voice,” Callas said. “What does it mean? When you interpret a role you have to have a thousand colors to portray happiness, joy, sorrow, anger, fear. How cn you do this with only a beautiful voice? Even if you sing harshly sometimes, as I have done, it is a necessity of expression. You have to do it even if people will not understand.But in the long run they will, because you must persuade them of what you are doing.”

Here is Callas on Medea, the legendary character of Ancient Greece who killed her own children in an act of revenge against their father, Jason. Speaking in interviews with Galatopoulos, she said of the role in Cherubini’s opera:

I saw her as fiery, apparently calm but very intense…. Medea is the one non-Greek personage in the opera. She is a barbarian Colchian Princess – the civilized Greeks would not accept her on equal terms. A Greek Medea invalidates the opera. The killing of the children is not merely an act of vengeance but more signifcantly a means of escape from a world that is foreign to her and in which she can no longer live. For Medea and her race, death is not the end but the beginning of a new life. Jason inherits a chaotic world in place of riches and power.”

 The Callas story is the subject of a pile of biographies. It fascinates opera lovers, but also celebrity watchers, admirers of feminine beauty and even women who have struggled with their weight (the beautiful Callas was once fat.) The pile is likely to grow because it’s an interesting life story, especially with Callas’s humble beginnings. Callas was born Maria Anna Sophie Cecilia Kalogeropoulos, the daughter of immigrants from Athens, in 1923 in New York. Her father was a pharmacist who did not fare as well financially in New York as the couple had hoped and her parents’ marriage was stormy and unhappy.

Her mother was ambitious for her two daughters and took them to Athens for musical training.
 There were many years of struggle, especially during the occupation of Greece in World War II. Maria debuted at the Royal Theater in Athens in 1940. She was overweight and suffering from serious acne at the time.


In 1947, as her career was gradually progressing, she married Giovanni Battista Meneghini, a fairly dull Italian industrialist and opera lover. He was thirty years her senior and was intent on devoting himself to her career. Callas, judging from letters between them, appeared to genuinely love him. One has to question her judgment, however, and wonder if she was not also seeking a father figure who could provide the comfort and security she needed to pursue her immense talent. Any woman in her mid-twenties who marries a man thirty years older is either carried away with love or calculation.

The Villa in Sirmione where Callas lived with Giovanni Battista Meneghini between 1950 and 1959.

 Meneghini eventually became her full-time manager. They were happy together for a number of years, it seems, but he lacked competence and honesty when it came to her business affairs. She ultimately exploded in rage at his misdealings. But, of course, Callas exploded in rage at quite a few people. She once punched an opera manager in the stomach with her knee.

Again, a man thirty years older is not much of a lifelong companion for a young woman. All finally unraveled between Meneghini and Callas when they went on a cruise on Onassis’s yacht in 1959. Among the other guests were Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine, as well as Onassis’s wife at the time, Tina, the mother of his two children. Onassis, a shipping magnate who was one of the richest men in the world at the time, swept Callas off her feet and, according to some accounts, they were lovers by the end of the voyage.

Callas’ s life would never be the same. She became less focused on her career in the years that followed and her voice precipitously deteriorated, events that may or may not have been affected by her new romantic entanglement. Onassis’ wife, who was a philanderer herself, filed for divorce and Callas left Meneghini and also attempted to nullify the marriage in the U.S.; divorce was not permissible in Italy. Callas sang her last operatic role in 1965, but would go on to do more concerts.

Callas and Onassis, who lived the life of  high society regulars in Paris, were besieged by the paparazzi during the seven years they were obviously involved, and speculation of a marriage was rampant. The world was stunned, and some say so was Callas, when Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy decided to marry in 1968. This was from all appearances a marriage of convenience for both parties.

Here are the myths about the Callas/Onassis affair that then spread and continue to be spread today by biographers:

• Callas had gotten pregnant by Onassis and had an abortion.
• Callas had gotten pregnant by Onassis and secretly gave birth to a baby, who immediately died.
• Onassis’ marriage to Kennedy was responsible for Callas’ early death at age 54.

None of these rumours has been proven. Each is unbelievable. The writer Nicholas Gage goes so far as to produce a photograph of an infant supposedly delivered by Callas and a birth certificate. Conveniently, there are no names of the parents as is standard on Italian birth certificates. No one noticed Callas as ever being pregnant and the idea, put forth by Gage, that she made a doctor do an early Caesarean so that no one would know she was pregnant, is preposterous. Neither Callas or Onassis, given their desire for children and their loose conformity to traditional Greek Orthodox morality, were likely to consent to an abortion. Also, Callas had visited a doctor for her fertility problems with Meneghini.

Callas told Galatopoulos that she had already ruled out marriage with Onassis by the time Jackie came along and that they maintained a deep friendship afterward.

 They had, she said, a “passionate friendship.” Too bad it hadn’t stayed that way from the beginning. One wonders if she would have been so drawn to Onassis if she had married a man closer to her in age. One thing appears certain, Callas’s affair was insensitive to Onassis’s young children and caused them considerable unhappiness. It was an act of selfishness. It also brought her little happiness in the long run. She openly spoke to Galatopoulos of this, calling it a mistake and failure. Onassis was an incorrigible womanizer and she could never adjust to this. Their friendship, however, she insisted was meant to be. The two were deeply drawn to each other. Onassis ironically was not a great opera fan, but was a man of considerable intelligence and charisma.

Callas, in voice and her legendary roles, was larger than life. In her affair with Onassis, she was as small as real life. It was ultimately low and sordid. Interestingly .