This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s Guide to Paris
On a sideway halfway down Avenue Georges Mandel, a tree boulevard branched by Trocadéro, is a sign paying homage to one of the city’s most legendary residents. Allée Maria Callas is in front of her home located in number 36, where the singer spent the last period of her life. Those the same apartment cleverly recreated for the latest film of director Pablo Larraín Marietinterpreting Angelina Jolie as an opera phenomenon.
Known as “La Divina”, Callas is widely considered the largest soprano ever. While I and a small number of tourists move to her building to take photos, I remember what her life and voice represents for people around the world, and how Paris is where they come to be close to her. With the issuance of Marietalong with a documentary interpreting Monica Bellucci following the world tour tournament Maria Callas: Letters and Memories And the latest events to mark the centenary of her birth, the singer has returned to the spotlight, fueling even more curiosity about her life and the places of Paris frequented.
Following the footsteps of Callas
Although Callas was born in New York for Greek parents, he later grew up in Athens and found international fame in Milan as the queen of La Scala, Paris was the country he called a house. “She serves as a character in her life story because in Paris she started again,” says Lyndsy Spence, author of Spend a diva: Maria Callas hidden life. “Paris also introduced it with an inaccessible (earlier) brilliance.” Callas was permanently transferred from Milan to Paris in 1963, and lived in her apartment on Avenue Georges Mandel, who was bought by her boyfriend, Aristotle Onassis. She kept it after their split and became a place of pilgrimage to visit artists. Continues to attract admirers.
The building itself is closed to the public, but fans can reserve a stay in the Suites Maria Callas in Ritz Paris, where she sought shelter among her recitals in Palais Garnier. It is a plush shelter with balconies overlooking the opera house, furnished in ivory and pink tones, with a steep ceiling and a sense of space and isolation that was important for callas. The walls are covered in portraits of “La Divina” that look ready. “There is something magic for that suite,” explained a goalkeeper. “Likes as if her spirit was there.”
Palais Garnier is probably the most prominent Callas landmark. “She gave a concert there and also sang in two full -length operas (rate AND Tosca), ”Says Spence. In 1958, Callas first sang there at a gala concert on behalf of Légion D’Honneur: “Perhaps the most fascinating production given in post -war Europe,” adds Spence, “where the stars of the film and the kingdom attended, and, more Important, Onassis. “
Dining and drama
For 17 years before her premature death in 1977, Callas reigned over the high society of Paris. “Everyone wonders about Maria Callas,” a waiter told me at restaurant Maxim for a recent visit. “People still try to sit at her regular table to feel closer to her.”
Opened in 1893, Maxim was her favorite restaurant, and is where Callas kept court over cute people From the time, directed mainly by her closest friends Rothschilds, Lilian Bettencourt and Maggie Van Zuylen. Maxim is also related to the image of “La Callas”, the big diva – her public personality filled with complications, revenge and romance (often because of Onassis). To the left of the restaurant’s entrance, under a series of mirrors and surrealistic furniture of Deco art, is the king’s table, where she would entertain friends and order her favorite dish, the steak steak. It was La Callas, not Maria, who received the 75th anniversary of the restaurant to steal attention from the marriage between Onassis and Jackie Kennedy. It was also the scene of a famous scandal in 1970 when Onassis, who was still married to Kennedy, and Callas reunited there for dinner. Kennedy insisted on eating at the king’s table night after.
Somewhere else, on certain nights, Callas and her bodies would celebrate in Chez Régine, discotheque pioneer open by Paris’s self-styling “Queen of the Night” Régine Zylberberg after they had finished with Maxim. Régine was The place to see and see for stars like Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon, Socialties and Royalty, and there are cases of callas that are stuck here by paparazzi (including, surprisingly, with a recently married Onassis).
A club still works there, though there is more than a faded glory. According to a staff member, it has the same mirrors on the ceilings; the same quotes from artists to walls; the same gold and silver wall lights; And, part of the resistanceA translucent dancing floor with an image of a panther, which all remain from the climax of the club. Like all Greeks (including myself), Callas praised Kitsch. And she was never over visits to the cabaret on both Crazy Horse and Le Lido, the iconic theater in the Champs-élysées that was famous for its Burlesk performers. The red and golden furniture of the Le Lido landing area are a return to the golden age of the 1960s, when Callas was photographed here with the French Rock Johnny Hallyday star.
A more refined stop is the Les Embassy Bar at Hôtel de Crillon, a stone cast from Maxim. Les Embassy remains a stylish institution with a décor that reminds you of Twenties of noisy of the 1920s. It was here that Callas sometimes snapped leaving early in the early morning – with onassis in pull. Callas was also known that he died in Maggie stylish in dinner Pigalle and Au Pied de Cochon from Les Halles for lunch. Although tourist, this is a classic Parisian brasserie, with a famous onion soup that warmed me up in my cold rush through Paris Callas.
Couture and inheritance
When it came to fashion, Callas wanted to buy at her friend’s store Yves Saint Laurent, says Spence, who was then at 21 rue de Tournon (the space is now occupied by a hair salon). Saint Laurent also designed clothing for the Callas stage ensembles. One of Callas’s favorite shopping institutions, Boutique Dior on 30 Avenue Montaigne, remains. She was also very loyal to the Boucheron jewelery at 26 Place Locas – a house and a fabulous doll of a building with a baroque decor not very different from the Callas apartment. “It was a regular picture for locals to see Callas walking her beloved poodles near Champs-Slysées,” Spence says.
Last
To pay respect, many people stop near Cenotaph of Callas in Père Lachaise Cemetery (often while looking for other famous tombstones, which include those of Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin and Edith Piaf). Although her ashes were scattered over the Aegean in 1979, according to her wishes, it remains a symbolic place of pilgrimage for fans. An unconditionable plaque can be found surrounded by beloved notes by visitors from around the world.
Paris Paris where we fans are able to connect with her triumphant but tragic life. And in each country, I found a constant sense of the Callas myth. But Paris is also where she felt really human. Spence summarizes it best. “In Paris,” she notes, “she may be Maria instead of La Callas.”
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