C 2024 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.
You may find other posts by searching for Onassis in the Google Blogger search feature!
What do we call a man who is Kept?
C 2024 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.
You may find other posts by searching for Onassis in the Google Blogger search feature!
This same teacher-mentor advocated for her to have income from the Greek National Opera, where she was signed for two years. Maria was to have a job - a steady income - and have her voice protected as she studied by not appearing in their productions. It was a way to get her in and expose the student to the behind-the-scene ways of the opera. Her contract was negotiated as she continued to study at the Athens Conservatory and live with her teacher-mentor. The teenager's career was being carefully managed or she was being controlled.
Her first advocate, her mother, Litsa, complained that Maria only spent her income on music, pastries, and ice cream and was out of control of her eating, just as her teacher-mentor arranged for her to have hairdressing, manicures, and dress making.
Then war interfered in everyone's lives.In late October 1940, when Maria was about seventeen, the Italians invaded Greece and the Greco-Italian War began. Maria and her family thought to flee to Cairo, Egypt, but Maria was an American citizen and not allowed to leave Athens, which was relatively safe. She was called "That American Bitch" as she began to realize her own talent and fight for herself. She did get parts in the opera in Athens, despite her teacher-mentor's pleas that she be "protected." Then World War II began when in 1941 Germany invaded. When there was a bombing and air-raid sirens went off, the sensitive Maria would vomit. They stayed in Athens.
Still under the age of eighteen, having conspired with her mother to lie about her age, Maria did not report to the Conservatory when she was sexually assaulted and almost raped by a fellow student (never identified). At home her mother was not sympathetic, only mentioning that if he had raped her then she would have had to marry him and end her career.
Such attitudes are crazy-making to us in Western culture in 2024, but are not unfamiliar to all of us who have experienced some form of sexual harassment during our careers.
Her world was small. At the conservatory other students called Maria fat and ugly and boys teased her as unattractive. Her mother continued to sew Maria clothing. Maria might have been eating out of garbage cans. In the 1941-1942 era there were food shortages, rationing, hunger. The family ate bread. This too could put weight on and gave Maria the appearance she was not famished. Olive oil and potatoes were procured on the black market by the man who was Keeping her sister and the family. There was always rumor about who was a collaborator because someone had food. People began to die of starvation and eat horses and donkeys.
The Nazi's took control of the National Opera and then Maria lost her contract and income. She had borrowed money from them and then later that year she was reinstated and given the opportunity to be an understudy. Those who had been so mean to her were kept out of the loop.
It was snowing and cold and there was no heating fuel. The Red Cross reported it. Jews were deported from Thessalonika.
Yet, opera went on, three hundred miles from Athens, in Thessalonika, where there was begging and prostitution. Maria's virtue was suspect. So was her sister's and mother's. Were they involved with Italian officers? Maybe Maria fell in love with an officer? Or perhaps Maria simply was gifted and had not succeeded against all odds without being touched? It's believed that she came home with money for singing for the Italians, though her own mother assumed it was from prostitution.
C 2024 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights including International and Internet Rights.
Mistress Manifesto, as a Google Blog, began in 2009 and, before I got up to speed, I chose Maria Callas as my Mistress of the Month. These days I feel that this dynamic woman deserves more and better coverage, especially as actress Angelina Jolie chose to portray her in film. So I will repost a couple items from the past and continue on with the book Cast a Diva by Lyndsy Spence, which will be the primary references for this month's posts.
Maria Callas was a famous and esteemed opera singer, some say the greatest, called The Queen of the Opera during her career, who had a soprano voice and three octave rang but is also known for her dramatic vocal interpretations. She was born in the United States as an American to Greek immigrant parents but thought of as Greek because of her heritage and because the she went back to Greece with her mother and sister as a pubescent teen and there began her voice training. (Eventually she would give up her American citizenship and become a Greek citizen again while desperate for a divorce.) As a teen, she had entered talent contests and appeared on amateur hours, was made to lie about her age, and borrowed records from the library to imitate other opera singer.
Beyond a stellar career, Maria Callas is known as the Mistress of the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, a reportedly fiery relationship. Did she want to marry Ari? I've always heard that to be true and it's something we will certainly explore. Onassis was married, divorced, and went on to marry the ultimate prize perhaps, the widow Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, wife of the assassinated United States President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, though they divorced famously as well. Maria had also been married, to an older man who took advantage of her and had been divorced. Maria was Onassis' mistress before and, other books have stated, during his marriage with Jackie.
Cast a Diva - The Hidden Life of Maria Callas by Lyndsy Spence, is not the first book I found interesting by author Spence. She also wrote a book about Doris Delevingne called The Mistress of Mayfair, which I reference here when I elected Doris to be Mistress of the Month in August of 2018. This month however, I will be posting based on chapters as I'm listening to the audiobook while also taking notes. Cast a Diva is reviewed on various book sites on the Internet as presenting Callas as a feminist icon; wonder if I will agree with that notion. That said, Maria Callas has also been associated with tragedy - personally and publicly.
MARIA CALLAS
Maria Cecelia Sophia Anna Kalogeropoulos
1923 (New York) - 1977 (Paris)
The early years of the life of Maria Callas were not easy or simple and had a profound effect on her psychology. Her parents were Greek immigrants to New York City in 1923. Maria's pharmacist father had career difficulties as an immigrant and her parents did not get along. It's suggested that her father was a womanizer or that her mother, "Litsa" thought herself and her family to be above his in status. Maria's mother decided that her two daughters were essential to her survival and the three of them went back to Greece in 1937, basically ditching her husband and their father. So Maria had little to no parenting by her father from that point. Her husband, Giovanni Battista Memeghini was an older man, and so was Aristotle Onassis.I can't help but wonder if she was vulnerable to older men because her father was so distant.
Maria's mother was emotionally abusive to her and there were serious questions about her mental health with suggestions that she was unstable, a narcissist, had borderline personality disorder or even schizophrenia. A brother had died and her mother wanted another son so Maria was an unwanted daughter. Maria had an older sister, Yakinthi, and their mother forced the girl into a relationship with a man, to become a Mistress to someone who would not only Keep her but financially help the whole family. This man supported all three of them for some time. This sacrifice on her sister's part also lead to a tangled and difficult relationship between Maria and her sister. With career success, Maria Callas found herself supporting her mother, and contributing to the support of her father and sister as well. They cared little for her personal happiness.
It could be said also that Maria's mother believed in her and promoted her as a child and had the ambition that Maria would someday support them all and free her sister from a dutiful pairing. Mother recognized that her daughter, Maria, had exceptional singing talent. Her mother begged for singing lessons for Maria, demanded she give her all to practice, and she allowed Maria to go without any education past about the eight grade. No doubt in my mind is that this lack of education and constant focus on vocal training instead of academics was part of the deep insecurity Maria felt. In 1939 Maria Callas began to study at the Athens Conservatory and the perfectionistic Maria had a fabulous career for some time.
Perhaps though, it was Maria's weight, along with the fraught relationships she had with her mother and sister, that caused the Opera Diva even more emotional issues as a young woman. The Diva was self-conscious of her myopia and acne, and it's said that she only felt loved while singing. Yet, Maria tapped into her wild range of emotions and feelings as an opera singer, and was unafraid of having an "ugly" voice if it was appropriate for the mood of a song. It was her ability to interpret the drama of a scene that, along with her exceptional voice, brought the audiences to tears and ovations. She said she wanted her voice to reflect "the atmosphere and thousands of colors."
Maria Callas married a rich industrialist, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, and was married for a decade from 1949-1959 to this husband who acted as her agent and manager. The Italian divorce laws at the time would make it near impossible for her to escape this marriage and this man's machinations. Like her family, in particular her mother, he proved to be only interested in her career and the fame and money that could buy them a good life.
There was Maria and then there was Callas, a private woman and a celebrity. She disagreed with feminism and the end of gender roles. "I failed to fulfill myself as a woman" she said, referring to her desire to have a child never fulfilled.
During this month, I will not focus on the details of Maria Callas' opera career, though I realize that many a opera fan or Maria Callas fan is interested in those details. I assure you that the book does follow her career closely. For our purposes here, we want to focus on her relationships with men, and how it is that she chose to remain faithful to the unfaithful Aristotle Onassis. How is it that she was considered his mistress? Was it simply because he would not marry her? Because she clearly could support herself well but he was richer? Was it his attitudes towards women in general, which most modern women would find to be revolting? Her relationship with Aristotle Onassis, whom she called "Aristo" was an extreme example of emotional and psychological abuse and domestic violence. Years went on in which an Italian divorce was not granted. Both Aristo and Maria at times lied to the press that they would marry and then claimed they were joking.
Maria Callas died at the age of fifty-three after a life typified by the highest highs and lowest lows. It's quite possible that using a certain drug illegally - though is some parts of the world it was legal - meant a slow suicide. She had withdrawn into her apartment, was estranged from her family and husband, and after her death her mother, sister, and husband would split her clothing and furniture among themselves.
Stick with me as we learn together about the life of this stellar personality and talent, through the vision of author Lyndsy Spence!
C 2024 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.
You may find other posts by searching for Onassis in the Google Blogger search feature!