The Second Marriage

“I am,” she agreed. She didn’t tell him that she was insecure, superstitious about her luck deserting her if she changed any of her rituals. She always used the same warm-ups, prayed to her Madonna icon, crossed herself three times, then stepped onto the stage right foot first. Always the right. “But clearly you were born with a great talent for business. I’m sure you get pleasure from striking a new deal and watching the money roll in.”

“It’s not about money for me,” he said. “I love the game. The simple explanation is that I can’t stand to lose, so I make sure that when I set my heart on something, I always get it.”

His words hung in the air between them, seeming loaded with meaning.

Maria was the first to speak. “I’m sorry not to make your party. Perhaps another time.”

“You were going to tell me when I should come and hear you sing, remember?”

“I will.” She laughed again. There was an awkward pause; then she said, “Do give my best to Tina,” before she hung up.

Maria decided not to mention the call to Battista. He was keen to become best buddies with Onassis. He liked befriending the superrich, whereas she always felt slightly uncomfortable around them, as if they could sense she wasn’t their social equal. The rented apartment in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood where she had grown up with her Greek immigrant parents and older sister had been comfortable enough, but her mother was never satisfied with it: “I’m used to better than this,” Evangelia moaned incessantly. “I should never have married down. What was I thinking?” As a product of that “marrying down,” Maria was still conscious of her place in the class system long after her success had helped her to transcend it.

ROME WAS OVERCAST, with a damp, penetrating wind blowing up the Tiber when they arrived on December 27. Maria and Battista were staying at the Hotel Quirinale, which was connected by a passageway to the Teatro dell’Opera. This meant she could protect her vocal cords from the chill of the streets, but the auditorium was as cold as the grave when she arrived for the first rehearsal.

“Can we have some heating, please?” she demanded. “Presto!”

An assistant stage manager scurried over and promised she would look into it, then sneezed violently. Maria yanked her scarf over her face. She couldn’t risk catching cold just days before a concert.

It was Norma, Bellini’s great tragedy, a difficult part but one she loved to sing. It suited her voice, with all the technical challenges and coloratura. She usually sang in full voice at rehearsals, just for the sheer joy of feeling the muscles working in harmony to create such glorious music. The acoustics were superb, of course, and the orchestra top-notch. She lost herself in such moments. This was the reason she put up with all the pressure and criticism—because the rewards were phenomenal.

On New Year’s Eve, four days after their arrival, they joined some friends for a party in a club called Circolo degli Scacchi. Maria permitted herself one small glass of champagne for a toast at midnight, but only sipped it. They stayed for an hour before heading back to the Quirinale.

“What would you like 1958 to bring?” she asked Battista in the taxi.

“I want to get more money out of La Scala when we renegotiate your contract,” he said. “They bought you too cheaply.”

He didn’t ask what she wanted, but he knew. She’d never made a secret of it. She yearned for a baby.

AS A SINGER, Maria had to be very attuned to the state of her health. She imagined it was the same for athletes, or anyone else whose body was highly trained for performance. So when she woke on the morning of January 1, she knew her throat didn’t feel right: slightly tight, a little bit scratchy. She nudged Battista and mimed that he should fetch the steam inhaler, then wrote on the notepad she kept by the bed that he should call a throat specialist.

While she breathed steam through the mask, she listened to him make phone call after phone call and became increasingly alarmed. No one was working on New Year’s Day. She thought back to that girl who had sneezed on the first day of rehearsal, three days earlier—exactly the incubation period for a cold or influenza virus.

She could tell that one call he made was to the opera’s director: “I hope you have an understudy,” he said, “because Maria may not be able to sing tomorrow.”

There was a long pause, then Battista retorted, “Be that as it may, if a doctor tells her not to sing, she will not sing. She can’t risk damaging her vocal cords.”

Maria clutched her throat. She couldn’t bear to let them down. Please, God, no.

The specialist who came that afternoon swabbed her throat and gave her an anti-inflammatory spray. All day she avoided speaking, using her notepad to communicate, sipping water at room temperature, and having clear soup for meals. No meat, no dairy, no solids.

The following morning, as soon as she awoke, she swallowed tentatively, and felt the tightness had eased a little. Still, she rested her voice all day, and an hour before curtain the doctor pronounced her fit to perform.

She did the warm-ups cautiously, scared to push herself. “Please give me good voice tonight,” she prayed to her Madonna. The Virgin smiled back, her expression benign.

In the first scenes, the notes were true but she couldn’t get much power behind them. The muscles were not responding. During “Casta Diva,” with its leap from middle F to high C and those long sustained notes, she could feel the sound weakening and her top notes becoming unsteady. Her voice was hanging by a thread. It was agonizing, but what could she do? There was nothing for it but to press on. After one particularly wobbly phrase, someone in the audience booed, and she winced. There was a shuffling of feet. They were restless.

Then she felt the instability hitting her lower register too, and the grumbling from the audience increased. “Go back to Milan!” someone shouted. She couldn’t blame them. They’d paid a fortune for their tickets and they weren’t getting value for money.

When she staggered backstage at the intermission, she knew she couldn’t go out again. Her forehead was burning and her throat was so swollen that it had almost closed.

“You need to get her to bed,” the doctor told Battista, after taking her temperature.

The director came to argue: the show would have to be canceled and he would sue.

Battista told him that he was an idiot for not getting an understudy and led Maria through the passage to their hotel. She wanted to apologize and try to explain, but she was so ill she felt close to collapse.

The next morning she heard Battista huffing and grunting as he looked through the newspapers that had been left at the door of their suite. The headlines were damning: “A Million Lire for a Single Disastrous Act,” one said. Another had a photograph of her drinking champagne in that damned nightclub. She hadn’t noticed a photographer; it must have been taken in the commotion just after midnight. They claimed that it was her “partying” that had damaged her voice. “Scandalo!,” “Disgrazia!,” “Insulta!,” they all agreed.

The public attack was infuriating and deeply unfair. In the whole of 1957, she had given sixty-seven performances and had postponed only one—in San Francisco, also on medical advice. She had been accused of canceling a Vienna concert, but in fact contract negotiations had stalled, so it didn’t happen. Hers was a better record than any other opera singer’s, yet the press insisted on portraying her as a spoiled diva who stormed out of productions on a whim. The media had invented a scowling persona for her and were sticking to their story, so there was no sympathy when she caught a cold in Rome. No, this was Maria Callas being difficult—again. They accused her of drinking champagne and staying out until dawn, when it wasn’t true. She was selfish, ungrateful, a disgrace. It reminded her of the litany of complaints her mother used to hurl at her in childhood—“Stupid, ugly, good-for-nothing girl”—and brought back a similar feeling of worthlessness.

As she lay in bed in the Hotel Quirinale, a compress wrapped around her throat, a telegram arrived. She tore it open.

“I’m sorry to hear of your malady,” it read. “Please let me know how I can help. May I send my personal physician? A private plane to whisk you to sunnier climes? Or a hitman to assassinate disrespectful journalists? Your wish is my command. Aristo.”

Maria smiled. All three would have been welcome. But instead she would keep her head down, recuperate, then work harder than ever to get ready for the full schedule of concerts already booked for the coming year—including a run at the Met in New York City in just a month’s time.

Chapter 6

Hyannis Port, Massachusetts October 1956

“I heard Maria Callas sing at the Met last night,” Jackie said during a lull in conversation around the Kennedys’ huge oak dinner table. “She was spectacular. It gave me gooseflesh that a human being can produce such a sound.”

Jack looked up from sawing his brisket. It was tough as boot leather; Jackie had left most of her portion. If she were in charge of the menu, the meals would be much better, but the Kennedys didn’t care about fine food. “Just think of all the votes I could have bought for the price of your ticket,” he quipped.

She felt a prick of annoyance. Running their household was her domain, but Jack was forever complaining about money these days, wanting to know how much she spent on drapes, and rugs—even on towels, for heaven’s sake. She was about to answer when Rose, Jack’s mother, chimed in.

“She sounds like a piece of work. Did you read that Time article about her?”

Jackie shook her head. “Not yet.”

“It says she is a diva who always has to get her own way.” Rose spoke as if this were a criminal act, although the same could be said of any of her children.

“I imagine you have to be very exacting to perform at her level,” Jackie replied. “And I also imagine the Time journalist went in wielding a hatchet because otherwise there’s no meat to the story.”

“Henry Luce and Briton Hadden were the cofounders of Time, back in the twenties,” Jack’s father, Joe, added. “Decent men, both of them, but Briton used to drive Henry crazy when he put actors and singers on the cover. He wanted it to be a heavyweight political paper, leaning towards the Republicans. But of course journalists tend to be young men of principle so it acquired its Democratic bias.”

“Who do we know there?” Jack asked. And, just like that, the subject switched back to politics.

“Ed Thompson will be with us.” Joe began to list Time journalists who might support Jack’s career.

Jackie would have liked to argue that Maria Callas was every bit as deserving of a Time cover as a transient politician, and that her ticket had been worth every last cent she’d paid for it, but she knew from experience that discussions around that table quickly became adversarial. All the Kennedy children were competitive; no one backed down, whether they were playing tennis, swimming, or debating. And none of them shared her belief that culture was equally as important as politics in a civilized society. This evening, she didn’t have the energy to fight them.

Jack stood abruptly, scraping his chair against the floor. “I’ve got a meeting in Hyannis at seven. I’ll grab dessert when I’m back, if you hounds leave me any.”

“Who are you meeting?” Jackie asked, then bit her lip. She wished she could be the independent, sassy girl Jack had fallen for rather than a nagging wife, but sometimes the questions slipped out.

“You know—the team,” he answered vaguely. “I won’t be late.”

He gave Jackie a quick kiss on the forehead, exactly the same kiss he gave his mother a second later. Not long afterward she heard his car’s engine turning over in the drive.

When they finished dinner, Jackie was about to head up to their room, but Joe grabbed her arm. “Let’s you and me go for a stroll. It’s a fine evening.”

She donned a wool wrap against the autumn chill and tied a headscarf over her hair. The Kennedy house was right on the Cape Cod seafront and winds whipped in off Nantucket Sound. The sun had sunk below the horizon but there was still a pinkish glow on the west-facing upper windows.

“You seem unhappy,” Joe said as they walked across the lawn toward the beach. “Is my son neglecting you?”

“No more than usual.” Jackie forced a chuckle. She and Joe had had this conversation before. Prior to the wedding, he’d warned her that Jack needed plenty of freedom, and she’d been able to tell him she already knew.

“You could have had any man you wanted,” Joe said. “I know that; he knows that. You’re brilliant, beautiful, charming, and you’ve got spirit.”

“What’s with the soft soap?” she asked. “Have you got a favor to ask?”

He spoke seriously. “Just that you don’t leave him.”

Jackie didn’t answer for a long time, but walked along the shoreline, listening to the noise of breakers crashing, then ebbing, sending pebbles scuttling. “Why not?” she asked. “Because it would ruin his political career?”

“No. Because I couldn’t bear to lose you as a daughter-in-law. Now, let’s talk frankly.”

“We always do, Joe,” she said softly. It wasn’t quite true, but she knew he liked to think they were close, and it suited her to let him think that.

“You’ve moved around too much since you got married. You need a proper home in D.C., somewhere to raise your family. What if I help you get somewhere real nice?”

“Are you trying to bribe me?” She gazed at the darkening ocean. Fishing boats were heading out, their lights blinking as they rose and dipped on the waves.

“I wouldn’t call it that. I want you to be happy and I’m asking you to tell me what that would take.”

Her eyes blurred with tears, and she was glad of the dark and the wind blowing into her face, so that he wouldn’t realize it. Did any of them know what it felt like to have lost two babies when the other Kennedy wives and daughters were producing grandchildren like clockwork? To have to attend their baby showers and christenings was agony.

“He does love you,” Joe continued. “As much as he is capable of loving anyone. But he’s thoughtless. You have to be very self-sufficient to be with my son.”

“You can say that again.” She wiped her eyes quickly with the edge of her wrap.

“You should get pregnant again soon, Jackie,” he said. “I can’t help you with that, but you know I’m right.”

“You’re an interfering old goat, Joe.” She laughed to mask her embarrassment. Sexual relations with Jack had been almost nonexistent since Arabella had died. She was too angry with him. She should revive their sex life; she knew she should. It wasn’t good for a marriage to let these things slide.

They stopped when they reached the end of the beach, where a fence separated them from the rocks beyond.

“Start house hunting,” he said. “Let me know when you find one you like. Decorate it however you want. Build a nest.”

Jackie nodded. She would enjoy that. As it happened, she already had a picture of her ideal house in mind. And perhaps, if there was any cash left over, they could buy their own place in Hyannis Port and not have to stay at the family home anymore. She’d like that.

A FEW MONTHS later, a Washington paper printed a story claiming that Jackie had been thinking of leaving her senator husband but that Joe Kennedy had bribed her to stay by giving her a check for a million dollars. Where did they get these stories with their tiny kernels of truth? she wondered. It was alarming to think there could be a leak so close to home.

She called her father-in-law, assuming he would have seen the story too. “Only a million, Joe?” she teased. “Why not ten million?”

He laughed, but she could sense caution. “Worth it at any price,” he said at last.

“I’ve got some news for you.” She crossed her fingers before continuing, so she didn’t jinx it. “I don’t want everyone to know yet because it’s early days but I followed your advice. I’m pregnant.”

“That’s wonderful!” he cried, and she could hear that he was grinning. “Third time lucky, eh?”

“Third time lucky,” she agreed, but she kept her fingers crossed after they got off the phone. At long last she hoped to give Jack a child, but she couldn’t help feeling scared. She didn’t know how she would bear it if anything went wrong this time.

Chapter 7

Milan April 1958

It was as if the Rome fiasco had unleashed whole new levels of abuse on Maria’s head. Her voice was as strong as ever and all her performances were sellouts, but the papers insisted she was a diva, a tigress, a monster, and wouldn’t have it any other way. They twisted the facts. One piece reported that she had insisted on rehearsing for six hours straight when she wasn’t happy with a production; it was true, but the director had agreed with her, and the press weren’t attacking him. She admitted to being a perfectionist about her work, but she always behaved with professionalism and never lost her temper, seldom even raising her voice. Yet when photographers snapped pictures of her in airports and emerging from stage doors, editors always chose the ones that made her look as if she were snarling or scowling.

“Does the public truly believe I am this vile creature?” she asked Battista, wincing at a particularly unflattering shot.

“Ignore it,” he said, without answering the question. “Who cares? Your friends know the real you.”

He didn’t understand her need to be liked. She couldn’t stand to have anyone think badly of her. She’d had a difficult childhood, with a mother who blatantly favored her elder, prettier, daintier daughter, Jacinthy. Maria grew up feeling ugly and unlovable, with her voice the only saving grace, so the news stories were rubbing salt in decades-old wounds.

What had she done to deserve this media treatment except be successful? Was she being punished for that, as she had been in the early days of her career when other singers resented her getting solo roles?

Some of the blame lay with La Scala’s press office, who fueled the flames by inventing a rivalry between Maria and another first soprano in the company, Renata Tebaldi: “Clash of the Prima Donnas!” It made good copy, but there was little truth in it. Renata was trained in the verismo school, which focused on a strongly produced tone and dropped the coloratura, while Maria trained in bel canto and had a full armory of trills and vocal flexibility. That meant they gravitated toward different repertoires. Maria didn’t know Renata well, but they were perfectly friendly whenever they met.

All the same, the rumor that they were rivals spread like the plague among Milanese opera lovers. They were a passionate bunch, never slow to express their opinions. If a singer missed a note, they would sing it back to him or her. If a performance was disappointing, the booing and hissing began. Their actions were in complete contrast to the hushed respect of other concert halls, especially London’s, where the audience was so polite that they would never dream of interrupting a performance. Maria admired the Milanese’s love of opera but not their bad manners.

It got to the point that one section of the La Scala auditorium was occupied by Renata Tebaldi’s supporters and another by Maria’s. Whenever she stepped onstage, Renata’s followers would shout abuse, and hers would try to drown them out with cheers. The moments before she opened her mouth to sing were like an ancient Roman gladiatorial contest: “Kill her!” “No, let her live another day.”

“Why can’t I just sing, without all the politics?” she pleaded with the press office, but they shrugged in that maddening Italian fashion, as if to say, “What can we do? It’s just the way things are.”

IN THE SPRING of 1958, Maria was rehearsing two productions back-to-back: Anna Bolena and Il Pirata. That was manageable, but for some reason Ghiringhelli, the artistic director of La Scala, was being childish and petulant. One morning, when he saw her entering through the stage door, he ducked behind a piece of scenery and disappeared, knocking over some wooden castle battlements that hit the floor with a resounding clatter.

“What’s eating him?” she asked the doorman, and he shook his head in bewilderment.

Ghiringhelli sat near the back of the auditorium during rehearsal that day and rushed out at the end before Maria could ask him for feedback.

“Have I done something to upset him?” she asked a nearby tenor.

“I think it’s to do with your contract,” the tenor whispered behind his hand. “I hear he’s in a rage about your husband’s demands.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Maria exclaimed. “That’s just business. I’ll go and speak to him.”

“He’s not here,” Ghiringhelli’s secretary insisted, panic etched across her face.

Maria glanced through the frosted glass and saw a figure crouched behind a filing cabinet. He was hiding from her. Unbelievable! She considered bursting in and confronting him but thought better of it.

“Please tell Mr. Ghiringhelli that I merely wanted to ask about my opening nights,” she said, making sure her voice carried. “No one has yet told me when they will be.” It was a reasonable enough request.

“Of course,” the secretary agreed, scribbling on a notepad. “I’ll ask him to let you know.”

No word came. Two days later, Maria found out by chance, when she saw the dates printed on a poster in the vestibule.

She knew Battista could be aggressive in his negotiations with opera houses, but she never interfered. Their deal was that she focused on the singing while he handled the business side, but it was hard not to feel alarmed. For all its faults, she loved La Scala with a passion. It was the crème de la crème of opera houses, the home of Verdi and Toscanini, the place where every opera singer dreamed of triumphing yet few succeeded. When she had been invited to join the company back in 1952, it had been the proudest moment of her life. They had given her the chance to sing all the choice soprano roles, and she loved working with their top-notch musicians and highly skilled stage crew. It felt as if she had a real home at last, and a musical family to make up for the love she lacked from her birth family.

“Please don’t alienate Ghiringhelli,” she begged Battista that evening. “You know I would sing at La Scala for no fee whatsoever, simply for the honor.”

“Leave the contract to me,” he insisted. “I think I’m getting through to them at last.”

ANNA BOLENA PREMIÈRED and the reviews were glowing, although the audience was rowdier than ever. Booing and cheering at curtain was par for the course, but one night a section of the crowd was so noisy that she could scarcely hear herself sing. In the third act, at the point where the guards came to arrest her character, she snapped. She pushed the guards aside, charged to the footlights, and sang directly at the offenders, shaking her fist, eyes blazing: “Judges? … My fate is decided if my accuser is also my judge … But I will be exculpated after death …”

Her supporters went mad, their clapping and cheering filling the auditorium all the way to the gods. The orchestra had to pause for several minutes till the furor died down, and Maria stood her ground, fists clenched, glaring at the troublemakers.

It was gratifying at the time, and backstage her fellow performers congratulated her, but that’s when the trouble began to spill out into Maria and Battista’s private lives. Their address was well known—Via Buonarroti 40, in the Teatro district. One day, not long after she had confronted the audience, their driver found a dead dog on the backseat of their car; a few days later excrement was smeared on their railings, and obscene graffiti scrawled on their walls.