The Onassis curse: inside Maria Callas’ troubled romance with Aristotle
She was queen of the opera, but behind the scenes diva Maria Callas struggled to find happiness. In billionaire Aristotle Onassis she thought she had finally found her soulmate, but a new book reveals the truth about their nine-year tryst.
InNovember 1952, Maria Callas was invited by Sir David Webster of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to give five performances of Norma. She held a high D for 12 beats, inspiring critics to call her “the most exciting singer on the stage today”. Opera magazine wrote, “Callas held her audience in abject slavery.” Until then, she had immersed herself in the vocal techniques of opera. Now she wanted to physically embody its heroines. She said, “You can’t portray a beautiful young woman if you’re enormous.”
A forthcoming production of Medea at La Scala was her incentive: she wanted a sharp chin “for expression in certain very hard phrases, cruel phrases or tense phrases”.
In early 1954, Maria visited a Swiss clinic run by Dr Paul Niehans, a pioneer in living cell therapy, who injected her with dried hormone extract to stimulate her endocrine system, reducing her weight to 165lb (75kg). Unsatisfied with her progress, she sought a different treatment from Niehans in which iodine was injected into her thyroid gland. It was also rumoured that she went to another Swiss doctor for additional injections and was therefore overdosing on iodine, resulting in an overactive thyroid. Despite the risk to her health, the results were to her liking: she now weighed 140lb (63kg) and her measurements had decreased from 45–35–47 to 37–28–37.
Although Maria was satisfied with her new figure, she began to make other changes to her appearance. Evidence suggests she resorted to plastic surgery to tighten the skin around her arms.
During that period, Maria and Titta [Giovanni Battista Meneghini, the brick manufacturer she married in 1949] sold their apartment in Verona and moved to Milan, buying a small house. Its interior design of antique furniture, paintings and gold draperies was compared to a brothel with pretensions to class. There was a large back garden with a pond, and she filled it with goldfish and turtles, gifts from fans who knew of her love for animals. To maintain what she called perfect harmony and order, she employed a housekeeper, cook, maid and gardener.
Maria was not only slim but carried herself with confidence: the woman was now at one with the artist. Now, she was as recognisable as any Hollywood star,
“She stood up, twirled about in an imitation of a model, or what she fondly believed was an imitation of a model ... She said, ‘Surprise!’. Here was a suave, utterly feminine ... freshly seductive figure,” wrote Leo Lerman in his published letters and papers.
In December 1958, she went to Paris to sing in a televised concert at the Palais Garnier, on behalf of the Légion d’Honneur, to whom she donated her fee of 5 million francs. Among the celebrities and dignitaries was Aristotle Onassis, who, since their first encounter in Venice a year earlier, had been intrigued by her fame but had not yet seen her perform. Throughout her stay in Paris, he sent roses to her suite at the Ritz, with messages of admiration written in Greek, although left unsigned. On the last day, he revealed his identity, signing his name, ‘The Other Greek’. She wondered why Onassis, then 53 and married with two children, would romance her from afar.
Onassis continued to pursue Maria from afar, and they were to meet again in the spring, in Venice, at Contessa Castelbarco’s annual ball. She danced with Onassis, thrilled by ‘our hands, the textures of our skin, so pleasing to each other’s touch’, while his wife, Tina, watched … In London, Onassis did not attempt to hide his attraction to Maria, nor did she make an effort to discourage it. The opening night of Medea was the social event of the season, and Onassis appeared with an entourage of 36.
On 22 July, Maria and Titta boarded the [Onassis’s mega yacht] Christina in Monte Carlo, the last of the guests to arrive. She was nervous when Onassis introduced her to Sir Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine.
Maria’s strange behaviour was fuelled by something deeper than guilt, as if she had something to hide. She was attracted to Onassis. It had begun in London and, years later, she told friends she knew they would be together. It was her destiny to fall for a powerful man. Others sensed the attraction, even if Maria thought she was being discreet. They saw the secret looks and overheard snippets of conversations in Greek, his hollow laugh responding to her silly jokes.
Every day, she tried to be alone with him, but either her husband or his wife was always in the way. She loved to watch him in action, taking business calls over the radiotelephone and talking in various languages to associates all over the world. To her, he was the epitome of masculinity.
Inside their room, Maria and Titta argued over her future engagements and she stormed out. Walking the length of the yacht, she found Onassis leaning over the railing of the stern. They stood in silence as the land slipped out of view. He spoke first and told her how, at the age of six, he lost his mother and, he wondered, had she lived, would his life have been different? Confiding in one another, they discussed their rootless existences, and she viewed them both as victims of their circumstances.
She rationalised her feelings: in her mind, she and Onassis were man and wife, and hours later they consummated their love.
It seemed pointless to hide their affair since everyone except Churchill was aware something had taken place. Sometime between midnight and
2am, Tina had gone to the saloon and caught Maria and Onassis in one another’s arms, beneath the counterfeit El Greco painting.
Once Tina moved past the humiliation of the shipboard gossip, she used it to her advantage and asked for a divorce. Titta played the scorned
“To Maria, Aristotle Onassis was the epitome of masculinity.”
husband and, calling Maria an animal, he asked how she could let herself go. “I love him,” she said.
Forty-eight hours later, Onassis arrived in Milan and they spent a clandestine evening together. The next morning, she told Titta, “It’s all over between us. I have decided to stay with Onassis.” At 10pm, she met with him to discuss their separation and her future contracts.
Maria filed for a legal separation, as divorce was illegal in Italy. Agreeing to the division of their assets, she gave [Titta] their villa in Sirmione and asked to keep their house in Milan.
Returning to Milan, she was surprised to find Titta had moved into her house to gain the right of possession. In her own words, she was left homeless, without clothes and the means to live. He opened the safe and removed their joint will, made in 1954, which appointed him as her heir.
Tina, an American citizen, had filed for divorce in the New York Supreme Court on the grounds of adultery and asked for custody of their children. However, Tina did not cite Maria as a co-respondent but instead named an old school friend, Jeanne Rhinelander, in the petition.
Regardless, Onassis ordered Maria to disembark and move into the Hotel Hermitage, then he telephoned Tina, begging her to reconsider the divorce. Even then, after the change in his personality, Maria did not realise he was “a charming psychopath ... bound by absolutely no moral imperatives at all”. Perhaps to make him understand she would be a faithful wife, she told Gente magazine, “I want to live just like a normal person, with a family, a home, a dog”. She changed her appearance to suit his tastes, cutting her long hair at his request, and wearing black, his favourite colour.
Abandoned by Onassis, who moved between London and Monte Carlo, and with no future engagements, Maria returned to Milan and spent her 36th birthday alone. She also spent Christmas by herself. In the
New Year of 1960, she made the first attempt to divorce Titta, whom she accused of being ‘not normal’ and, tired of his harassment, she asked for police protection.
To France-Soir, she confided, “I want to have a baby; I’m 36 years old, with no one in my life, and I do not even know if I am capable of giving [birth] to a being.”
Knowing of Maria’s longing for a family, Onassis had made promises to her in late 1959, which came to fruition in early 1960, when she conceived a child. His words meant nothing, however, because during his marriage to Tina, he wanted only one child: his son and heir, Alexander, born in 1948. Thereafter, he forced Tina to have abortions and, when she became pregnant in 1950, she decided to keep her baby. As she had failed to obey him, Onassis beat Tina, hoping to cause a miscarriage, but it did not.
Responding to Maria’s news, he ordered her to abort and offered ‘any amount of money’ for her to do so. Having a baby with one man while married to another would have ended her career.
Maria went to Brussels to give a concert. In Brussels, she attended a rehearsal but cancelled the concert due to tracheitis. A short time later, she suffered a miscarriage. Her close friend and occasional secretary, Giovanna Lomazzi, said: “During the period of 1960, I was in almost daily contact with Maria ... During this time, [she] went to a clinic in Milan, under a false name and had an abortion. What is not known is whether this was a natural abortion
[treatment following a miscarriage], or was planned. This is a secret that died with Maria Callas.”
The remainder of the summer was spent with Onassis, who no longer concealed his changing temperament. Many were struck by how ‘defenceless and inappropriate she looked ... like an apprehensive school girl’ when she was around him. She accompanied him to strip shows and, at his request, wore nothing but diamonds to bed.
There was no longer a veil of secrecy: the staff were accustomed to their loud voices, particularly the scenes of verbal abuse – a common theme – which he used as a prelude to sex, often manhandling her and causing her pain. She gave him a licence to hurt her, in every sense of the meaning, telling him, “I am yours – do with me as you want”.
Maria suspected he was being unfaithful but he denied it, telling her she was paranoid and that her accusations were pathetic. However, her instincts proved correct: in the spring of 1962, he began an affair with Lee Radziwill, the 28-year-old wife of Prince Stanislaw ‘Stas’ Radziwill, and younger sister of the American First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.
Although Maria was unaware of Lee, she discovered that Onassis was a client of Madame Claude’s, whose brothel near the Champs Elysées employed 500 prostitutes and catered to the mafia, film stars, tycoons, statesmen and royals. Since his first experience at Fahrie’s in Smyrna, he came to view women as transactions and derived pleasure in treating them as such. The décor of his bedroom at Avenue Foch was modelled on a brothel which, in his words, was to remind women of what they were. “The best girl,” he said, “is a girl you never have to see again.”
His depraved requests shocked even Madame Claude, and as Maria would soon learn, he preferred emaciated young women for such trysts.
In April 1963, Maria joined Onassis on a cruise of Italy and Greece, in the company of his daughter, Christina, and the Radziwills. The women disliked one another, and Lee, with her gaze fixed on Onassis, made no effort with Maria. In turn, Maria saw Lee as a threat: she, with her tiny frame, embodied everything he looked for when he paid for women. “I hate Lee. I hate her!” she said.
Months before, Onassis had taken Maria to view a château in Versailles, where she hoped they would live together, but her dreams remained unfulfilled. All she had was her career, marred by a vocal crisis and lack of confidence. Onassis had destroyed her self-esteem as a woman, and the public, who she called “a monster”, planted the final dart. So, she periodically forgot about Onassis and returned to the stage.
They went to Athens and dined with Stas and Lee, who had returned from America following the death of her sister’s premature baby. Both Onassis and Maria expressed their sympathy, and she, although remotely interested in her dinner companions, was alarmed when he suggested Jacqueline Kennedy convalesce on the Christina, chaperoned by Lee. This was a provocative request – Onassis was a criminal by American standards because, in 1953, he had been indicted by the US Government for fraud. However, Jacqueline, grieving for her baby and wounded by her husband’s philandering, accepted the invitation.
It seemed Onassis had known the First Lady’s weaknesses. In their private moments, he had extracted information from Lee, who was unaware that she was furnishing his desires to infiltrate Washington. The Christina was stocked with eight varieties of caviar and vintage champagne; he hired two hairdressers, a French chef, a Swedish masseuse, and an orchestra to join his crew of 60. Then, as part of his charm offensive, he offered to withdraw, but Jacqueline insisted he should accompany them. “How can we possibly go without our host?” she asked, her breathless voice enchanting him.
Although Maria had believed that Onassis was not on board, she opened her newspaper and learned otherwise. “She’s the captain; Mrs Kennedy’s in charge here,” Onassis told reporters, who gathered at Piraeus, from where the Christina departed. It was a bitter blow, for Maria had once moved a stick of furniture on the yacht and was reprimanded for doing so. “Never forget, my darling,” he had said in measured tones, “you are not the housewife here, you are only a guest.” The staff watched as he walked away, leaving her crying and shouting in his wake. From afar, Maria followed their itinerary in the newspapers: he had taken Jacqueline and Lee to Smyrna, and the photographs were printed on the front pages around the world.
At the end of the cruise, Onassis gave Jacqueline a diamond and ruby bracelet worth $50,000 and boasted to his friends it was payment for sex, calling her “a classy coquette”. To Lee, he offered a few bangles, a meagre farewell present – or perhaps a reward for introducing her sister to him.
Their old sibling rivalry was at play: Lee saw how Onassis looked at Jacqueline, as did Maria, who studied the paparazzi images of him guiding the First Lady through the narrow streets of Smyrna. “Four years ago, that was me by his side, being seduced by the story of his life,” Maria said.
A month later, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, and Maria was surprised when Onassis flew to Washington and checked into the Willard Hotel. It was an embarrassing situation for Lee, as he had arrived unannounced, and Jacqueline felt compelled to host him at the White House ... his motive all along.
As in business, Onassis saw an opportunity to exploit: Lee was still married to Stas, but Jacqueline was a widow, and therefore, available.
After the funeral, he was given a cold reception. The guests mocked him and made jokes at his expense, particularly Bobby Kennedy who, now head of the family, asked how he obtained his fortune. Mortified by his presence, Lee never said a word; she knew she had served her purpose.
Perhaps Onassis realised that only Maria respected him: she never made him feel like an outsider, the way he did among old-money families or political dynasties. He returned to Paris to celebrate her 40th at Maxim’s. She and Onassis were once again inseparable as they went from one party to another, in Paris and Monte Carlo, surrounded by the jet set.
One evening, they dined with friends and, in high spirits, Maria said, “Tell Ari he ought to marry me”. She expected Onassis to respond with a joke, but suddenly his mood changed and his words cut her to the quick. “Maria, I can’t do that,” he said. “This is a pay-as-you-go arrangement.”
Soon, photographs of Onassis and Jacqueline appeared in the newspapers and, although they were never alone, Maria understood the significance of the publicity. “With a woman like Jackie and a man like you, starting something is easy, Aristo. But how do you stop it?” she asked him.
Then one day, Onassis shattered her delusions – the “dreamy side, where everything is loyal, everything is beautiful and pure” – and ordered her to leave the yacht. “Go back to Paris and wait for me,” he said, informing her that an important guest was expected and she could not be there.
In Paris, she waited by the telephone for Onassis’s call, yet she feared hearing his voice. To friends, Onassis spoke of his regret in proposing to Jacqueline; he wanted to leave her and return to Maria. Maria was the last to know and received the news from Onassis’s butler, who felt compelled to tell her. Then she read of his marriage plans and her entire world imploded. “The worst is that he never told me anything about his marriage,” she said. “I think he ought to after nine years by his side, at least I shouldn’t have had to learn it in the newspapers.”