Editing Maria Callas (section)

==Onassis, final years, and death==
[[File:Aristotle Onassis.JPG|thumb|upright=0.6|Aristotle Onassis]]
In 1957, while still married to husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini, Callas was introduced to Greek shipping magnate [[Aristotle Onassis]] at a party given in her honor by [[Elsa Maxwell]] after a performance in Donizetti's ''Anna Bolena''.<ref name="scott" /> The affair that followed received much publicity in the popular press, and in November 1959, Callas left her husband. Michael Scott asserts that Onassis was not sure why Callas largely abandoned her career, but that he offered her a way out of a career that was made increasingly difficult by scandals and by vocal resources that were diminishing at an alarming rate.<ref name="scott" /> Franco Zeffirelli, on the other hand, recalls asking Callas in 1963 why she had not practiced her singing, and Callas responding that "I have been trying to fulfill my life as a woman."<ref name="documentary" />

[[File:Churchill and Maria Callas.jpg|thumb|left|Callas with [[Winston Churchill]] on Onassis' yacht in the late 50s]]
According to one of her biographers, [[Nicholas Gage]], Callas and Onassis had a child, a boy, who died hours after he was born on March 30, 1960.<ref name="gage">{{cite book | last=Gage | first=Nicholas | title=Greek Fire: The Story Of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis | publisher=Knopf | date=October 3, 2000 | isbn=978-0-375-40244-9 | url=https://archive.org/details/greekfirestoryof00gage }}</ref> In his book about his wife, Meneghini states categorically that Maria Callas was unable to bear children.<ref name="meneghini">{{cite book | last=Meneghini | first=Giovanni Battista | title=My Wife Maria Callas | publisher=Farrar Straus Giroux | location=New York | year=1982 | isbn=978-0-374-21752-5 | url=https://archive.org/details/mywifemariacalla00mene }}</ref> Various sources also dismiss Gage's claim, as they note that the birth certificates Gage used to prove this "secret child" were issued in 1998, twenty-one years after Callas's death.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.divinarecords.com/secret_son.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111004034035/http://www.divinarecords.com/secret_son.htm|url-status=dead|title=A Callas Recording Update|archive-date=October 4, 2011}}</ref> Still other sources claim that Callas had at least one abortion while involved with Onassis.<ref>[[John Ardoin]] in ''Callas, La Divina'' (film documentary) {{IMDb title|0261051|Maria Callas: La Divina – A Portrait|(1988)}}</ref>

In 1966, Callas [[renunciation of United States citizenship|renounced her U.S. citizenship]] at the [[Embassy of the United States, Paris|American Embassy in Paris]], to facilitate the end of her marriage to Meneghini.{{sfn|Petsalis-Diomidis|2001|p={{Page needed|date=September 2018}}}}<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ioU0AAAAIBAJ&pg=3411,550438&dq=renounced+us+citizenship&hl=en|title=Maria Callas Has Renounced US Citizenship|work=Palm Beach Daily News|date=April 7, 1966|access-date=May 12, 2012}}{{Dead link|date=December 2021 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> This was because after her renunciation, she was only a Greek citizen, and under Greek law of that time, a Greek could legally marry only in a [[Greek Orthodoxy|Greek Orthodox church]]. As she had married in a Roman Catholic church, this divorced her in Greece. The renunciation also helped her finances, as she no longer had to pay U.S. taxes on her income. Her relationship with Onassis ended two years later in 1968, when he left Callas for [[Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis|Jacqueline Kennedy]]. However, the Onassis family's private secretary Kiki writes in her memoir that even while Aristotle was with Jackie, he frequently met with Maria in Paris, where they resumed what had now become a clandestine affair.<ref name="gage"/>
[[File:Avenue Georges-Mandel, 36, Paris 16.jpg|thumb|upright|The last residence of Maria Callas, in Paris]]

Callas spent her last years living largely in isolation in Paris and died of a heart attack at age 53 on September 16, 1977.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1202.html|title=Maria Callas, 53, Is Dead of Heart Attack in Paris|website=archive.nytimes.com|access-date=April 18, 2018}}</ref>

A funerary liturgy was held at [[St. Stephen's Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Paris|St Stephen's Greek Orthodox Cathedral]] on rue Georges-Bizet, Paris on September 20, 1977. She was later cremated at the [[Père Lachaise Cemetery]] and her ashes were placed in the [[columbarium]] there. After being stolen and later recovered, they were scattered over the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Greece, according to her wish, in the spring of 1979.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Who was Maria Callas, the great operatic soprano voice nicknamed 'La Divina'? |url=https://www.classicfm.com/artists/maria-callas/voice-family-life-death-operatic-soprano/ |access-date=2023-12-11 |website=Classic FM |language=en}}</ref>

During a 1978 interview, upon being asked "Was it worth it to Maria Callas? She was a lonely, unhappy, often difficult woman", music critic and Callas's friend John Ardoin replied:<blockquote>That's such a difficult question. There are times, you know, when there are people – certain people who are blessed, and cursed, with an extraordinary gift, in which the gift is almost greater than the human being. And Callas was one of these people. It was almost as if her wishes, her life, her own happiness were all subservient to this incredible, incredible gift that she was given, this gift that reached out and taught us all – taught us things about music we knew very well, but showed us new things, things we never thought about, new possibilities. I think that's why singers admire her so; I think that's why conductors admire her so; I know that's why I admire her so. And she paid a tremendously difficult and expensive price for this career. I don't think she always understood what she did or why she did. She knew she had a tremendous effect on audiences and on people. But it was not something that she could always live with gracefully or happily. I once said to her, "It must be very enviable to be Maria Callas." And she said, "No, it's a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it's a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand." Because she couldn't explain what she did – it was all done by instinct; it was something, incredibly, embedded deep within her.<ref>''Swank in the Arts'', KERA TV, Dallas, Patsy Swank Interview with John Ardoin, 1978</ref><ref name="Callas, A Documentary 1978"/></blockquote>

=== Estate ===
[[File:Maria Callas by Karuvits.jpg|upright|thumb|Portrait of Callas (2004), by Oleg Karuvits]]
According to several Callas biographers, Vasso Devetzi, a Greek pianist near the same age as Callas, insinuated herself into Callas's trust during her last years and acted virtually as her agent.<ref>{{cite book|last=Galatopoulos|first=Stelios|year=1998|title=Maria Callas, Sacred Monster|location=New York|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=978-0-684-85985-9|url=https://archive.org/details/mariacallassacre00gala}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_news.php?id=209|title=Franco Zeffirelli Says Maria Callas Was Poisoned @www.classicalsource.com|website=www.classicalsource.com|access-date=July 5, 2018|archive-date=July 6, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180706022259/http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_news.php?id=209|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OIQOMZPshGkC&pg=PA310 | title=Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography| isbn=978-0-312-31002-8| last1=Edwards| first1=Anne| date=February 27, 2003| publisher=St. Martin's Press}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/mystery-of-the-callas-millions-resurfaces-as-jewels-are-put-up-for-auction-7907004.html|title=Mystery of the Callas millions resurfaces as jewels are put up for|date=October 26, 2004|website=The Independent}}</ref> This claim is corroborated by Iakintha (Jackie) Callas in her 1990 book ''Sisters,'' wherein she asserts that Devetzi conned Maria out of control of half of her estate while promising to establish the Maria Callas Foundation to provide scholarships for young singers; after hundreds of thousands of dollars had allegedly vanished, Devetzi finally did establish the foundation.<ref>{{cite book | last=Callas | first=Jackie | title=Sisters: A Revealing Portrait of the World's Most Famous Diva | publisher=St. Martin's Press | location=Gordonsville, Virginia |year=1990 | isbn=978-0-312-03934-9 }}</ref>