I don’t need the money, dear.    

                          I work for art.

— Maria Callas

 

Fawning famed soprano Maria Callas passed at the age of fifty-five in the year of my birth, 1977. She was the center of attention, like she loved to be, when she metamorphosed from a fleshy-figured woman into a sultry sylph demanding the title of Divina at the crest of her career. Her countless critics blamed the loss of her weight as a means of explaining the siren’s loss of vocal virtuosity. The muse was suddenly the diabolical dame chasing a good time and a powerful man. The cheap tabloids rejoiced in that while still married, she was seen with Aristotle Onassis; they basked in her heartache when he conclusively favored Jacqueline Kennedy over her. Despite rumors claiming that Callas kept the weight off by consuming tapeworm larva, she asserted it was due to a prudent diet. In the gloaming of her last days, she became a recluse in Paris, melancholy in the search for true love, and perhaps potently addicted to Quaaludes. “Undisclosed causes” was how officially the French authorities deemed her death. Some claimed her sizable estate drew the duplicitous greed goblins from out the shadows. Near her lifeless body was found a note written by Callas which read: “In these proud moments.” This is a line borrowed from the suicide scene in the opera La Gioconda.

 

Though gone now for some time, I can still hear the voice of the goddess come through in waves, lancing in past duller days, resurrecting the corpse I become in my delving ways, and smile, for I know she will live forever in the sinews of the aesthetically lofty and echo past the prime of petty pop music.

 

Grazie, Mi Divina.

 

Ti adoro.

 

Because of you, life is bearable.

“Don’t talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I         make the goddam rules.”

 

Hail Callas!

∞