Word: maria
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...racquetwomen saved their biggest win for last, triumphing over the University of California at Santa Clara last Friday. Playing number one. Tiina Bougas won in straight sets and Maria Pe followed suit with a three-set victory in the second slot, but the racquetwomen still could manage only a 3-3 standoff after the singles matches. The Crimson then poured it on under the lights by sweeping the three doubles matches...
...maybe Maria was ready to quit. She had married Giovanni Meneghini, a Veronese businessman 28 years her senior, who adored her but soon bored her. Walter Legge, then head of EMI records, liked to tell a story about a late night conversation with them: "Wooler undervests visible beneath their nightwear, [they were] reading Italian illustrateds." Callas decided to become Audrey Hepburn (Roman Holiday was a favorite film) and lost 62 Ibs. in two years. In 1956 Callas met Elsa Maxwell, who swept her into European café society and the next year introduced her to Aristotle Onassis...
Though he cared nothing for opera, Onassis immediately basked in Maria's artistic fame. She said goodbye to Meneghini and sailed away on Onassis' yacht Christina to a life of luxury and narcissism. She got her TMWL (To Maria With Love) bracelet-just as Onassis' first wife Tina had received a TTWL and his second, Jacqueline Kennedy, would get a TJWL...
...Kennedy-Onassis marriage was not a success. He continued to see Maria and, reports Biographer Arianna Stassinopoulos, just before he died in 1975, he hired Roy Conn to start divorce proceedings against Jackie. But the diva's happiness was over. An affair with Tenor Giuseppe di Stefano was doomed; the poor man could not match her memory of Onassis. She declined rapidly after several illnesses, and it was not really surprising when she died in Paris, at 54, living in comfort but alone...
Stassinopoulos is also good at interviewing sources and collecting anecdotes. When glaucoma was diagnosed and eyedrops required every two hours, Maria bought a tiny Louis XV timepiece that tinkled an alarm every two hours. Yet she loved nothing better than combing Woolworth's for such "bargains" as a lemon squeezer or potato peeler. A friend remembered a lunch at Claridges during which Maria proudly produced her latest finds. The Callas jealousy was legendary. The sight of her beloved Visconti, who was homosexual, merely talking with Leonard Bernstein sent her into a rage. Yet she did not always take herself...