Amadeus: Timber. (Opera Biography, No. 14). Portland, Oregon, 2001. c.600p. illus. bibliog. index., $40, LC 00-040155. ISBN 1-57467-059-X
Like the fans of James Dean, Jean Harlowe, Jim Morrison, Diana Princess of Wales, and others, Maria Callas’s fans remain grief-stricken 29 years after her death, her annual record sales amount to almost one million dollars and her underwear is publicly offered to souvenir hunters at auction.
This book takes the prolonged post mortem one step further by focusing on Maria Callas’ early years before she acquired the fame, which gave her immortality, about which almost nothing has been previously written. As an investigative work it is staggering, involving minute detail of the years she spent in occupied Athens during World War 2. It’s a major task to read, and it’s with a sense of enhanced, sad understanding rather than factual enlightenment that one finishes the book and gazes once more on the Callas recordings and authorized iconography which the singer would probably have preferred as her memorial.
Still, the legitimate research behind the book counts for much, and it may be for this reason that the distinguished Earl of Harewood, regarded as a trusted friend of Maria Callas, wrote the preface. The strength of the book is the work the author did to find and interview witnesses, many now dead, whose observations are presented with apparent caution and respect for their reluctance to talk on the record at all.
This strength is also the book’s weakness, as few are willing or able to make authoritative remarks. It’s touching to see how many of her unknown former acquaintances and colleagues were unwilling to make adverse comments about Maria Callas or to recall events, which were painful to her and to them. In the absence of their precise confirmation of the facts on which they are asked to comment, the author presents the information anyway, subject to sufficient caveats to protect the integrity of the text and, in some cases, enhanced by his own opinions.
His attention to detail leads Mr. Petsalis-Diomedes to reinforce some of the well-known stories that usually appear in discussions of the singer’s life before she became successful and beautiful. Those that predominate in this book concern her youthful ugliness, greed, nastiness to others, and susceptibility to enemy aliens during the occupation of Greece, the approximate date of the loss of her virginity, and her relationship with the “wobble” in her upper register. These are part of the Callas legend and do no particular damage, but as Mr. Petsalis-Diomedes announces at the beginning of the book that he is going to avoid them it is bemusing to find oneself reading so much about them.
The book ends with the young Maria’s departure from Greece for her career abroad, but the author adds as one of several appendices a discussion of Maria’s famous break with her mother. No other book, except perhaps Litsa’s own silly book published in 1967, makes such a case of perfidy against Litsa Kaloyeropoulou. The author with relish presents previously unpublished letters between the husband, mother and father and Maria’s mother emerges as a giant amongst those self obsessed child/mothers who never allow their children to ignore them while simultaneously failing to give of themselves. For this reason alone the book is fun to read, but the discussion hardly amounts to the most perfect case of objective historicity.
In setting out to be the witness of truth to Maria Callas’ early years the author has succeeded in exposing many authentic (and minute) details of the child who metamorphosed into what the author calls “the miracle that was Maria Callas.” However Maria’s ability to be eponymous was too great to allow him to succeed completely. Like her underwear, which was bought and burned by the Athenian municipal council, this book shows, by a serious and mostly scholarly effort to find them, that Maria’s secrets are no longer available. Too much was not said and too many have kept their silence. For those who try to speak for her, this means everything.
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