Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (34 page)

35

Vacationing on the
Christina
, Maria shopped with Tina Onassis at Portofino. She was now hopelessly in love with Aristo.

36

Madame Biki, dressmaker and old friend, choosing evening dresses, before Maria’s Paris debut as Norma. Maria wished she could be nursing a baby with Aristo by her side, not preparing for her first full opera in Paris. “Onassis destroyed her life,” Biki said years later.

37

Met farewell as Tosca: March 1965.

38

“ . . . When I met Aristo, so full of life, I became a different woman.” In Ibiza.

39

At the Paris Lido. He brought love, frivolity, passion and tenderness to the life of a dedicated nun who had begun to lose the taste for her vocation.

40

41

Nowhere does Maria seem so happy, so contented, as on the deck of the
Christina
.

42

Waving from the motor launch to the local people.

43

Ari’s sister, Count Theo Rossi di Montelera, Maria, and Ari’s son, Alexander, on the
Christina
. Ari backed out of marriage to Maria on the grounds that it would cause his children emotional upheaval.

44

Ari was a man tipsy with the smell of fame and drunk at the prospect of more of it.

45

The night of Ari’s wedding to Jackie, Maria was the center of attention at a party to celebrate Maxim’s 75th anniversary.

46

October 20, 1968, Skorpios.

47

Hélène Rochas, an old friend, at the reunion dinner party for Maria and Ari after the wedding.