#maria callas the woman behind the legend

[cinematic-literature]

Faye (2024) by Laurent Bouzereau

Book title: Maria Callas, The Woman Behind the Legend (1981) by Arianna Stassinopoulos

[madame-est-morte]

First off, Marilyn and Maria had very different relationships with Jackie’s husbands. Marilyn was just a casual lover, one of many, but Maria was with Onassis for 9 YEARS. He wasn’t faithful, of course, but she was unconditionally devoted to him and hoped against hope that someday he’d marry her. Their relationship was far from a secret. Jackie knew this and still married Onassis. He didn’t even have the decency to tell Maria he was getting married; she learned it on the news.

But shortly after the wedding (and I mean weeks), Onassis returned to Maria. She was the one who stood by his side through it all, including his failing business, declining health and the death of his son Alexander. Jackie was incapable of dealing with such emotional turmoil and was often away, something that Onassis resented. She wasn’t even by his side when he died. His daughter Christina was. Maria would have been there too if she had been allowed. So yes, choke on the truth. Jackie may have been legally married to Aristotle Onassis, but Maria Callas was the love of his life - insofar as someone like him was capable of loving another.

This information doesn’t come from trashy sources, but from authoritative books about everyone involved, including Donald Spoto’s Marilyn Monroe, Sarah Bradford’s America’s Queen, Arianna Huffington’s Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend and the documentary Maria by Callas, which uses Maria’s private letters, among other personal papers.

The point of this mess is not pitting women against each other. It’s recognizing that what Jackie and Onassis did was wrong, since they deeply hurt an innocent woman in the process. Because let’s be real, Jackie had no scruples when it came to money. She hoarded it like Smaug in The Hobbit. Even when her husband was president and she was on top of the world, she told him she could use his salary as president instead of donating to charity like he was doing.

There were other factors in her marriage to Onassis, including the recent assassination of Robert Kennedy and her lingering PTSD, so she may not have been thinking clearly. But she had plenty of men to choose from (including actual royalty like Lord Harlech), and yet chose the one who was, by all intents and purposes, married to someone else.

And the main reason Jackie could work as a book editor later in life was because of the money and influence those marriages had afforded her. She didn’t have the necessary studies or skills, but was able to learn them on the job because she was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and any publisher would have wanted to have her on their team. For more information, see William Kuhn’s Reading Jackie and Greg Lawrence’s Jackie as Editor.

Maria had married a wealthy man, yes, but she was a rising star by then. She had lived through war and poverty and became a legend through talent and dedication. Even if she hadn’t married Meneghini or met Onassis, she still would have become Maria Callas.

Jackie, Onassis and even Marilyn became famous for being famous, not for any particular talent or achievement. Because even though it was sexist and objectifying, Marilyn didn’t stand out for her acting prowess, but for her sex appeal. Only in recent years has her legacy been reassessed.

And Onassis only courted celebrities and was able to surround himself with them because he was wealthy. Even in death, he’s still riding on the coattails of others.

people who shame Jackie to prop up Marilyn and Maria Callas are the most annoying individuals. esp the ones who act like Jackie stole Maria from Onassis when Maria literally didn't care about Onassis's first wife and had an affair with him or how Marilyn did her friend dirty by sleeping with her husband (Yves Montand)

Were Maria and Marilyn talented? yes, but their stans like to say all Jackie did was marry wealthy men as if she wasn't an editor, or a mother or was actively doing work (she attended a lot of private fundraisers for charity, just bc she wasn't out in front of a camera holding a baby doesn't mean she wasn't doing anything) and they like to pretend that Maria and Marilyn didn't also want to marry wealthy men for comfort.

people can choke. Jackie was a WIFE to both those men no matter how much they try to spin it or like to pretend how special they are.

One of society's greatest forms of entertainment is pitting women against each other. Women cannot do anything without someone comparing them to other women. Of course Jackie, Marilyn, and Maria married rich men, because those were the types of men they were around due to who they were.