Music: Love & Money

Maria Meneghini Callas, a famous diva. . .Soprano Giovanni Meneghini, her aging husband. . .Bass Elsa Maxwell, her trusted confidante Baritone Evangelia Callas, her estranged mother. . .Contralto Aristotle Onassis, a wealthy shipowner. . .Tenor Athina Onassis, his beautiful young wife. . .Mezzo

The theme would have appealed to any opera composer from Donizetti to Kurt Weill: money and love. But particularly the former, since as Somerset Maugham put it, “In the end. all passions turn to money.”

She was the daughter of an immigrant Greek druggist in New York, a fat ugly duckling with myopic eyes, who turned to singing to forget the feeling of being unwanted in a broken home. He was a middle-aged Italian building-materials tycoon. Under his loving care, the fat duckling slimmed herself from 213 Ibs. into a glamorous creature, and became the most fabulously acclaimed opera singer of her time. The tokens of their happiness accumulated: a villa at Sirmione, two palaces in Verona, numerous art objects, jewelry, autos, motorboats and joint bank accounts. Their love, it seemed, thrived on money, and money thrived on love. And yet last week, after ten years of this golden idyl. Callas, 35, and Meneghini, 64, announced that they were “definitely and irreparably” separated.

“I Was Ill.” The crisis came on the sleek, white, 322-ft. yacht of Greek Shipping Tycoon Aristotle Onassis, 53. Onassis, too, was a man who knew the value of money. Starting as a night telephone operator in Buenos Aires, he had taken shrewd advantage of a wave of deflation to build one of the world’s largest tanker fleets and accumulate a fortune of about $300 million. Love brought him more money in the shape of Athina (Tina) Livanos, beautiful daughter of Millionaire Shipping Czar Stavros Livanos and sister-in-law of Millionaire Shipping Czar Stavros Niarchos. The glow of the Onassis fortunes attracted the famous. Aboard his yacht Christina IV during the summer’s fateful Mediterranean cruise were, in addition to the Meneghinis, Sir Winston and Lady Churchill and assorted Riviera bluebloods.

In a series of moving recitatives, Meneghini last week poured out the story: “The sea was choppy. I was ill. My wife was in one of her morose, taciturn moods, more of a tigress than ever. Onassis, on the other hand, was transformed. As the sea grew rougher, he became a real sea dog, giving orders right and left. One night my wife returned from a party at the Istanbul Hilton and said she loved another man. After an hour which seemed like an eternity, she admitted that the man was Aristotle Onassis.”

“I Guess Not.” Soprano Callas sang quite another tune: the break had occurred during the cruise, all right, but the timing was “purely coincidental—it had been coming for a long time.” Its real source, she hinted, was her dissatisfaction over her husband’s activities as her private impresario. “I am my own boss now.” said she, insisting that she would not share another cent she makes with Meneghini. As for Onassis, it wasn’t passion, just money, said Callas. “My relations with him involve business matters.” One possible Onassis-backed “business matter”: a contract to play the lead in a film version of Novelist Hans Habe’s serialized German potboiler, Die Primadonna.

Shipowner Onassis sang a variation on the Callas theme: “Friends have described me as a sailor,” went his barcarolle. “Sailors do not usually gofor sopranos.” But, he added, “I would indeed be flattered to have a woman of her class fall for me.”

This elaborate counterpoint confused even Confidante Maxwell, tireless companion of the rich, who had just thrown her annual party at Venice’s Danieli. After consulting her friend “Ari,” she supplied a breathless answer to the question of whether Callas and Onassis would marry: “I guess not.”

Meanwhile, Tina Onassis left her husband’s yacht in Venice and retreated with her children to Paris; through her secretary she insisted that she “completely trusts her husband.” Onassis commuted between Venice and Milan, finally scooped up Callas in his private plane and embarked on a cruise to Greece.

“I Created Callas.” If it wasn’t love, what did Onassis see in Callas? Perhaps what he saw was a way to add new luster to all that money. “Onassis has his billions and wants to polish up his tankers, using the name of a great star,” explained Meneghini, who after years of silence, now kept delivering some of the best lines of the whole affair. “Perhaps the fault is all mine for deluding myself with hopes of immortal love. I was building a little masterpiece. Then I fell in love with my masterpiece and I married her. I created Callas, and she repaid me with a stab in the back. She was a fat, clumsily dressed woman, a refugee, a gypsy when I met her. She had not a cent nor any prospect for a career. I had to rent her a room at a hotel and had to put up $700 so she could remain in Italy. I never exploited her. Can one exploit one’s wife?”

The climactic aria belonged to Mamma Callas, who works at the Manhattan jewelry shop of Mamma Gabor. Last week she recalled with gratitude how Meneghini once sent her $40, while Maria sent her nothing. Said Evangelia of her daughter: “Meneghini was a father and a mother to Maria. Now she no longer needs him. But Maria will never be happy; my soul says it. Women like Maria can never know real love.”