“I think it’s to do with your contract,” the tenor whispered behind his hand. “I hear he’s in a rage about your husband’s demands.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Maria exclaimed. “That’s just business. I’ll go and speak to him.”
“He’s not here,” Ghiringhelli’s secretary insisted, panic etched across her face.
Maria glanced through the frosted glass and saw a figure crouched behind a filing cabinet. He was hiding from her. Unbelievable! She considered bursting in and confronting him but thought better of it.
“Please tell Mr. Ghiringhelli that I merely wanted to ask about my opening nights,” she said, making sure her voice carried. “No one has yet told me when they will be.” It was a reasonable enough request.
“Of course,” the secretary agreed, scribbling on a notepad. “I’ll ask him to let you know.”
No word came. Two days later, Maria found out by chance, when she saw the dates printed on a poster in the vestibule.
She knew Battista could be aggressive in his negotiations with opera houses, but she never interfered. Their deal was that she focused on the singing while he handled the business side, but it was hard not to feel alarmed. For all its faults, she loved La Scala with a passion. It was the crème de la crème of opera houses, the home of Verdi and Toscanini, the place where every opera singer dreamed of triumphing yet few succeeded. When she had been invited to join the company back in 1952, it had been the proudest moment of her life. They had given her the chance to sing all the choice soprano roles, and she loved working with their top-notch musicians and highly skilled stage crew. It felt as if she had a real home at last, and a musical family to make up for the love she lacked from her birth family.
“Please don’t alienate Ghiringhelli,” she begged Battista that evening. “You know I would sing at La Scala for no fee whatsoever, simply for the honor.”
“Leave the contract to me,” he insisted. “I think I’m getting through to them at last.”
ANNA BOLENA PREMIÈRED and the reviews were glowing, although the audience was rowdier than ever. Booing and cheering at curtain was par for the course, but one night a section of the crowd was so noisy that she could scarcely hear herself sing. In the third act, at the point where the guards came to arrest her character, she snapped. She pushed the guards aside, charged to the footlights, and sang directly at the offenders, shaking her fist, eyes blazing: “Judges? . . . My fate is decided if my accuser is also my judge. . . . But I will be exculpated after death . . .”
Her supporters went mad, their clapping and cheering filling the auditorium all the way to the gods. The orchestra had to pause for several minutes till the furor died down, and Maria stood her ground, fists clenched, glaring at the troublemakers.
It was gratifying at the time, and backstage her fellow performers congratulated her, but that’s when the trouble began to spill out into Maria and Battista’s private lives. Their address was well known—Via Buonarroti 40, in the Teatro district. One day, not long after she had confronted the audience, their driver found a dead dog on the backseat of their car; a few days later excrement was smeared on their railings, and obscene graffiti scrawled on their walls.
Maria began to fear that the hysteria was building to a crescendo and they weren’t safe in their beds. The police came and recommended that doors and windows on the ground floor be kept locked. She couldn’t walk her pet poodles anymore, couldn’t browse in local boutiques or relax outside a café with an espresso—those days were gone.
The price of fame kept getting higher. It was crazy. All she’d ever wanted to do was sing.
ARISTOTLE RANG IN the midst of that tumultuous time. He caught Maria at a vulnerable moment and she let off steam.
“It’s absurd that such beautiful music can provoke such ugly behavior,” she told him. “We have policemen patrolling the theater and I have a police escort to take me from the stage door to my car. Can you believe it?”
“I’ve been following reports in the press,” he said. “Can’t your publicist release some stories to calm the atmosphere? Perhaps a photo showing you and Renata Tebaldi having dinner together, the best of friends?”
“I don’t have a publicist,” she said. “Battista handles press inquiries.”
“You’re kidding! He does that and manages your contracts and bookings as well? It’s a lot for one person. A decent publicist could place positive stories and help to kill the negative ones. I’ve had a PR for years.”
Maria wrinkled her nose. She preferred to avoid the press. “I keep hoping it will die down. I’ll be in London in June; then we’re having a long summer break. Maybe by fall the atmosphere will be calmer. If not, the way things are going I may have to hire a bodyguard.”
“Perhaps you should do that anyway,” he said. “I don’t like to think of you at risk from some lunatic.”
She shivered. “I’m safe at Lake Garda at least. We’ve got a house in Sirmione that is my sanctuary. The locals don’t bother me. That’s where we’ll spend the summer, and I can’t wait.”
She loved the serenity of the little town on the shores of the lake, where the water was as deep as the Alps were high, the ice-cream shops had fifty different flavors, and there was an old-fashioned civility. Her dogs loved it too.
“I was hoping to persuade you to come for a cruise on the Christina,” he said. “Would I be wasting my breath?”
She hesitated. It was flattering that he was being so attentive, and it seemed harmless enough since they were both married to other people. She might have been tempted to visit his famous floating palace, where they would surely be cosseted in the utmost luxury, but she was too exhausted. “This year I need rest and solitude,” she said. “But thank you.”
There was another reason for turning down the offer. Celebrities were often photographed on his yacht, the women chic in Chanel beachwear and cat’s-eye sunglasses. It had been only four years since Maria had lost eighty pounds and slimmed down to her present shape, and she still felt like a fat girl inside. Posing alongside the world’s most glamorous women, with press photographers snapping away like sharks, was her idea of hell on earth.
Chapter 8
Milan
May 1958
Maria was in the music room one evening, accompanying herself on the elegant Bechstein grand piano she’d bought with her first paycheck from La Scala, when Battista came in. “They aren’t renewing your contract,” he announced.
She was horrified. “La Scala? But why not? They have to renew!”
“It’s a mixture of money and the trouble that’s been breaking out. Plus Ghiringhelli is being a bastard.” He shrugged. It seemed he was just going to accept it, as if this were purely a business decision and her feelings didn’t come into it.
“No!” She panicked. “Go back to them. Reduce the fee. I can’t leave La Scala!” She felt as if she’d been stabbed. It would break her heart to go.
“We’ve got no choice,” he said. “There are plenty of other opera houses, decent places where you won’t be intimidated by maniacs.”