The Greek singer Maria Callas was famous, but behind her glory days is a sad, lonely woman affected by illness, suffering from eating disorders in addition to being confronted with several scandals. Marked by hardship, the famous opera singer died at just 53 years old in extreme solitude. She never recovered from losing the love of her life, Aristotle Onassis, a new biography reveals.
Certainly, Maria Callas left her mark on the history of opera with her prodigious voice. Adored by the whole world, she led a life that many might have apparently envied. But if his career was flamboyant, on the other hand, his personal life was sad and tormented.
Of her childhood, Maria Callas will say that her mother did not love her and that she only had it for her older sister, Jackie, more beautiful and thinner than her.
“Photo provided by Éditions Gremese”
Maria Callas was born in New York in 1923 to a family of Greek immigrants. Her mother, Evangelia, is passionate about music and would have liked to do theater or become a singer. She therefore transposes her ambitions onto her daughters by offering them piano lessons.
If at first Evangelia bets on her daughter Jackie, she quickly realizes that Maria has an exceptional voice. From the age of eight, the little girl stood out from the others with her voice, and at the age of 10, she was already giving concerts organized by her school. Not only is young Maria talented, but she works with great determination in addition to being a very perfectionist. She already sees singing as a vocation.
Angry and capricious
At 14, she saw her parents separate and she left with her mother and sister to live in Athens, Greece. She perfected her art by entering the Greek National Conservatory, then the prestigious Athens Conservatory, and gave her first opera performance at the age of 16. She made her professional debut two years later.
If Maria goes from success to success, she blames her mother, who plays stage manager, for making her work too much to the point of saying that her childhood was stolen from her. However, many will say that it was thanks to her mother, who pushed her to work, that she became one of the most famous singers in the world. She will go so far as to make him work on his image and his style while encouraging him to lose weight.
Maria cuts ties with her mother at 22 and goes to try her luck in the United States. She landed leading roles, toured and met her husband Giovanni.
In addition to singing, Maria has used her talent as a tragedian over the years to interpret dramatic characters.
From 1947 to 1965, she gave nearly 600 concerts, in addition to performing around forty roles and recording 26 complete operas. But the diva also has a reputation for being an angry and capricious prima donna.
Painful love
It was in the 1960s that luck turned against him. She is having problems with her voice. Then there is the famous meeting with the famous Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis on his yacht.
They were both married, but became lovers in 1959. Maria divorced, hoping to become Onassis’s wife, but that never happened.
Aristotle Onassis will become the love of her life, she will devote more and more time to him, abandoning her career, but the shipowner will choose to marry Jackie Kennedy in 1968 and breaks his ties with Maria.
The last years of the diva’s life were difficult. She receives harsh criticism for the film Medea and the scandals about him keep coming. She even has the right to a lawsuit filed by her former agent. She suffers from her separation from Onassis whose life with his new wife is highly publicized.
Added to this are serious health problems. In 1970, she was hospitalized after an overdose of barbiturates. She is also known for her suicidal thoughts, but claims that her overdose was accidental.
She spends the last years of her life as a recluse, but will eventually reconnect with Onassis. She will go see him until the last day when he is hospitalized. He died in 1975 and she was greatly shaken.
Maria Callas died at the age of 53, alone in her Paris apartment in 1977. The circumstances of her death have never been clarified. Hypnotic tablets found on her bedside table raised the possibility of suicide, but she could also have died as a result of a degenerative disease of the vocal cords, called dermatomyositis. The treatment to treat her based on corticosteroids and immunosuppressants would have led to the heart failure responsible for the singer’s death. Finally, some claim that his draconian diet had an impact on his health, while others suggest a pulmonary embolism.
The mystery remains.
2024-02-23 00:28:59
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