Excerpt – Maria La Divina by Jerome Charyn
Synopsis
An intimate portrait of the world’s most iconic opera singer
Maria Callas, called La Divina, is widely recognized as the greatest diva who ever lived. Jerome Charyn’s Callas springs to life as the headstrong, mercurial, and charismatic artist who captivated generations of fans, thrilling audiences with her brilliant performances and defiant personality.
Callas, an outsider from an impoverished background, was shunned by the Italian opera houses, but through sheer force of will and the power and range of her voice, she broke through the invisible wall to sing at La Scala and headline at the Metropolitan Opera, forging an unforgettable career. Adored by celebrities and statesmen, the notable and notorious alike, her every movement was shadowed by both music critics and gossip columnists—until, having lost her voice, she died alone in an opulent, mausoleum-like Paris apartment.
In Charyn’s inimitable style, Maria La Divina humanizes the celebrated diva, revealing the mythical artist as a woman who survived hunger, war, and loneliness to reach the heights of acclaim.
Amazon * B&N * Bookshop
Excerpt
From her balcony on the Via San Fermo, Maria could see into the heart of the Roman Arena and watch the singers and dancers rehearse onstage, though their voices couldn’t travel far enough to waft into her windows. It still amused her, because it was like watching a live puppet show, but these puppets had human limbs and strutted about at a furious pace.
Offers kept pouring in for Maria to sing everywhere except at La Scala.
Maria went down and sat at her favorite caffè and read Laura Sordelo in Oggi while spooning her second butterscotch sundae. The article wiped the taste of caramel from her mouth.
Will the lion of La Scala ever wake up? Or will Ghiringhelli guard his precious Tebaldi behind her own private curtain? She will never reach La Callas’ high notes in this lifetime or another. Will he ever admit that the greatest soprano in all of Italy lives in Verona? Wake up, Antonio, wake up, before it is too late.
Laura’s remarks in Oggi had no effect on the lion of La Scala. But to her great surprise, Maria did get a telegram from Wally Toscanini, the maestro’s daughter, a powerhouse in opera circles. The telegram was quite cryptic.
THE MAESTRO AWAITS YOU IN MILAN
It was dated September 22. Maria did have a suspicion of what it might be about—1951 would mark the fiftieth anniversary of Verdi’s death, and La Scala hoped to celebrate that anniversary, with the help of Arturo Toscanini, in the town of Busseto, close to where Verdi had been born.
Toscanini had a godlike presence in Maria’s life as a child. She listened to him on the radio every Saturday afternoon as he conducted the NBC Symphony of the Air. Toscanini had his own magic wand. He could slice into the deepest lines of any composer with his baton. Whatever he touched—Schubert, Brahms—had a range of emotion that no other conductor could summon from a musical score.
And so Maria and Titta had a rendezvous with the maestro and his daughter at Via Durini 20, the maestro’s quarters in Milan. It resembled a fortress rather than a villa, with burnt sienna bricks and a steel door.
Wally had silver earrings and dark hair swept up in a bun. The maestro wore a dark suit and vest that must have come out of a medieval tailor shop. He was so thin that he couldn’t stand straight. He wavered at a slight angle. Maria could see all the veins in his pale white skin. He was eighty-three years old, and could have been visiting Maria from another century. His mind was keen, but his voice was a monotone and had none of the music of his magic wand.
“Maria,” he asked, “will you be my Lady Macbeth?”
As awed as she was by him, Maria answered shrewdly. “But Maestro, you have Tebaldi.”
His tiny eyes flashed with anger. He was capable of the worst tantrums. During rehearsals, he was known to rip a ringing telephone off the wall if it interfered with the thrust of his baton.
“I do not want a canary in a cage,” he said in a much sharper tone. “What I want is a dangerous diva.”
“But Ghiringhelli despises me,” Maria said. “He will not let me near any project associated with La Scala.”
“Ghiringhelli is an idiot,” the maestro said. “Wally, am I right or not?”
His daughter smiled. “Papa, you will make us look like pagan warriors in front of La Callas and her husband.”
“We are pagan warriors,” the maestro said. And then he turned to Maria.
“Have you read Shakespeare’s Macbeth?”
Maria felt embarrassed in front of the maestro and Wally. She was silent for a moment and then she seemed to stutter. “Macbeth was not in the c-c-curriculum at my public school in Washington Heights.”
“Perfecto,” the maestro said. “Shakespeare was a humanist. Verdi was not. His Lady Macbeth is a gangster, like Al Capone. . . . My spies have told me about your Norma and your Turandot. But how can I be sure that you have the devil in you? Come, you must audition for me. I have never once in my life conducted Verdi’s Macbeth. It frightened me. I searched, but I could not find my Lady Macbeth, a soprano with enough venom, the venom that Verdi himself insisted upon. He wanted her to be ugly and evil, with the darkest voice that one could imagine.”
He led Maria over to the piano, clutching her hand as if he were her suitor—or second husband. “Come. I will play and you will sing.”
Maria was frantic. She had never studied Verdi’s opera, not a single note. She would have to sight-read on the spot. Toscanini opened the score of Macbeth as Maria hovered over him. He played with a relentless touch of the keyboard while Maria recited or sang every role—Banquo, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and Duncan, the Scottish king. . . .
Titta watched his wife’s eyes widen with a half-crazed alarm as she sang in a deliberate, sonorous voice, almost a death chant, urging Macbeth on to kill the king.
The maestro’s long fingers suddenly leapt from the keyboard as he stopped in the middle of the first act. He hummed to himself for a moment. And then he seemed to pierce Maria with a half-mad look of his own.
“It’s you, Maria, you I have been waiting for all these years. You will be my Lady Macbeth. I will speak to that fool Ghiringhelli and have him send you a letter of intent.”
The maestro grew impulsive. Wally had never seen him move with such swiftness. He grabbed Maria and waltzed around the living room with her. Photos fell off the mantelpiece. Wally had to clutch antiques from the shelves before they crashed to the floor.
“Father,” she said, “you must stop before you have a heart attack—I insist.”
But the maestro didn’t stop dancing. “Wally, can’t you see how happy I am? Now I will conduct Macbeth before I die.”
Excerpt from Maria La Divina. Copyright © 2025 by Jerome Charyn. Published by Bellevue Literary Press: www.blpress.org. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon calls him “one of the most important writers in American literature.” New York Newsday hailed Charyn as “a contemporary American Balzac,” and the Los Angeles Times described him as “absolutely unique among American writers.”
Since the 1964 release of Charyn’s first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published thirty novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays, and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year.
Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture. Charyn is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the American University of Paris.
In addition to writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top ten percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn’s book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, “The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong.”
Charyn’s most recent novel, Jerzy, was described by The New Yorker as a “fictional fantasia” about the life of Jerzy Kosinski, the controversial author of The Painted Bird. In 2010, Charyn wrote The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, an imagined autobiography of the renowned poet, a book characterized by Joyce Carol Oates as a “fever-dream picaresque.”
Charyn lives in New York City. He’s currently working with artists Asaf and Tomer Hanuka on an animated television series based on his Isaac Sidel crime novels.
