1# B&SEA:  
Meneghini was in many respects what he claimed to be: the Pygmalion who raised Calias to a superstar. He also reinforced in her certain bad habits which reduce her stature as a human being and of which he ultimately became a victim. These include the habit of breaking contracts and that of lying in public statements, as well as a kind of tight-fisted bargaining that should not really be connected with the creation of beauty. Despite all this, it may be that Callas was better off before she left him; at least, her life had reached a kind of creative equilibrium.</br></br>Her downfab came when she abowed herself to fab in love with Aristotle OnassisÛÓa haison that began, apparently, as a way of advancing her career but turned into something much more serious. Once she became deeply involved, she lost interest in singing;ÛÓwhich had once been the only thing that gave her life meaningÛÓand wanted (or thought she wanted) simply to become a wife and mother. But having pushed Onassis into a divorce, she fabed to become his wife and then watched in horror as he gravitated toward marriage with Jacqueline Kennedy.</br></br>Onassis and his entourage had no deep feelings about opera. In their world, Stassinopoulos notes, Cabas ÛÏwas largely surrounded by people who would announce with a shrib intensity that they loved music.Û As some men cobect books or paintings, Onassis was^ a .coUector of celebritiesÛÓ and he collected women in particular as an athlete cobects trophies. They were tokens of status, and the process of acquisitionÛÓof conquestÛÓseemed to interest him more than that of possession. If Maria Callas represented a sbver medal to the founder of Olympic Airways, Jacqueline Kennedy was a gold one. Cabas was clearly outbidÛÓas earlier Onassis had outbid Meneghini for her affections.</br></br>Tebing the story of this w'hole complex process in lavish detab, Stassinopoulos expresses and tries to inspire sympathy for CabasÛÓwho does seem for once a pathetic figure. But what one sees, in the overab shape of her bfe as in this specific episode, is simply the inexorable working out of defects in the characters of the parties involved ÛÓon the whole, a re--pebant lotÛÓwith Cabas at the center of the action, vigorously working her own destruction.</br></br>A final-judgment of Maria Callas may be given in the words of Walter Legge, who is the husband of the finest soprano of the 1950s and Ûª60s, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and who worked closely with Cabas as director of artists and repertoire for EMI Records.