Callas Comes Back

"I believe I must be just a little American kid at the back of my mind because I wanted someone, Prince Charming, to come in and take me away.

She might have been happy as only a wife and mother, claims Soprano Maria Callas, 50. "There have been two great loves in my life," she told a Miami Herald interviewer. "My husband and another man." But fate had other plans. The plump twelve-year-old who belted out Caro Nome on the Original Amateur Hour grew up to be the most famous opera singer of her generation, a tempestuous diva whose emotional pyrotechnics and lengthy affair with Aristotle Onassis often attracted as much attention as her vocal virtuosity.

Last October, emerging from an eight-year, self-imposed exile--she had got into some bad singing habits and the voice was threadbare--Callas embarked on a nine-month international concert tour, given with her old friend, Tenor Giuseppe di Stefano.

She admitted that her voice is no longer what it was: "Does anything stay the same for 20 years?" Nevertheless, she was convinced that the audiences still wanted her, that her artistry and talent would prevail. "I am a diva," she explains. "A diva's achievement depends on the strength of her will when she knows what she must do."

Docile Diva. Though she began the tour by postponing two concerts, Callas is a more docile diva now. "I don't know how it will go; I hope I sing well," she admitted before singing in Philadelphia.

Visibly frightened, she stayed within the protective circle of Di Stefano's arm.

In Washington, D.C., her voice was muted. Nearing any high note, she would look down. She bridled at suggestions that she had been tamed. "Mellowed," she snapped, "what is that? To mellow is to decay."

The turning point came in Boston. With Di Stefano felled by bronchitis, Callas summoned the courage to go on alone. The response was so warm that she sailed proudly into Manhattan's Carnegie Hall. "You are opera!" yelled a fan from the balcony. Across the footlights Callas confided that under the proper conditions, she would be willing to return to the Met. Critics reminisce about past glories and compliment the singer on her youthful beauty. Audiences have been outwardly enthusiastic, but in the lobby, complaints are heard: "I'm disappointed. We work harder than she does." Occasionally, with one ringing B, Callas can still excite concertgoers to ecstasy, casting a spell that momentarily deafens listeners to her vocal flaws. But in truth the voice is sadly diminished, and what remains is more a performer's than a musician's art.

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