I put Callas on hold

Yes, I actually did. I had Callas on the phone and I pressed the HOLD button.

Fresh out of NYU, I got a job at the beginning of 1972 at the now legendary (because it has dismayingly gone out of business) Joseph Patelson Music House. This was the classical sheet music shop across the street from the stage entrance of Carnegie Hall. I worked there for about 11 consecutive years, plus another couple of years later on. This store had many celebrity visitors over the years. In fact, Patelson’s was the main source of printed classical repertoire for thousands of students, teachers, amateur and professional musicians. I have a long list of names anyone would recognize whom I had encountered in the course of my job as a clerk on the sales floor.

It was quite early in my tenure that I took that call. In addition to waiting on customers who came into the shop, each of us was responsible to answer the phone and either take a mail order or look for music requested and set it aside, whatever the need may be. So imagine picking up the phone one morning and hearing “Hello, this is Maria Callas calling…”. Do you know that feeling when you know something momentous is happening and you feel your insides convulse, like your stomach has just dropped an inch lower into your abdomen?  I was not overly familiar at that time with the artistry of Callas, but I certainly knew she was one of the major stars of the opera world. My nervousness at the moment I heard her voice was due, in truth, to a little bit of awe that one may have for a celebrity one encounters, but also to a feeling of dread that my ignorance of the repertoire was about to be betrayed. Callas then asked, simply, if we had in stock a couple of different items of vocal sheet music. Regrettably, I do not recall what these were. I’m not sure if I even knew, really, what they were at the time, but I jotted down the names and then did exactly what we normally did… which was to ask the customer on the phone to hold on while I checked to see if we had the items. She really didn’t seem to mind, and I don’t know why she would have, and I did find her requests pretty quickly (whew!).

Now, here’s the part that struck me as unusual. She then asked me to set the music aside for her, saying that she would send her maid in for them. Her MAID! No one had ever said that before (and no one since either, for that matter). She was not the least bit pretentious in her tone of voice – not playing the diva, just very matter-of-fact – and the “maid” thing must have been perfectly natural for her. I think it entirely probable that in her most private life, she was a natural and unpretentious person. I remember the late Beth Liss, women’s clothing designer and proprietor of the erstwhile Women’s Haberdashers on Madison Avenue, relating how "Maria" would come into his shop, where she purchased clothing he had designed for her, and they would sit in the back and have long conversations about nothing at all consequential, just small talk. (Yes, his name was Beth, although his family called him Buddy.)

One of my co-workers at the time was an aspiring baritone, Dale Livingston. Dale was a big Callas fan, had a collection of all her recordings, commercial and “pirated”. Callas was to him as Vladimir Horowitz was to me. As soon as I had a little spending money, I had scoured the city for as many Horowitz recordings as I could find, and there was one midtown shop in particular that had a large supply of 78RPM recordings that I duly acquired. (Not sure, but the name Jack Meltzer comes to mind as the proprietor.) I felt sure that I had collected just about every recording there was to collect on Horowitz. (Silly me!) Anyway,  I am sure I must have told Dale about the phone call from Callas, and about the “maid”….

Later that day, Callas her own self walks through the door! She was wearing that same Blackglama mink coat featured in the 1970 ad (“What becomes a legend most”). There was a regal bearing about her as she walked through the shop toward the front cashier’s desk. Envelopes containing music set aside for customers were actually kept in shelves behind the middle desk under the marble staircase that was a major feature of the shop. I was, alas, not the person who actually retrieved her music for her and rang up the sale. But I did get to see her up close. Dale, arriving back from his lunch break at that moment was quite beside himself, repeating “Callas is here! Callas is here!...” I suspect he may have had some abdominal convulsions too. 

Now, I did casually wonder what made Callas change her mind about sending her maid for the music and to do the errand herself. I didn’t think into it too deeply, as people’s plans fluctuate and it may have just proved more convenient, if she was on her way somewhere nearby, for instance, to drop in and pick up the music. I am ashamed to admit that it did not occur to me until literally years later that she may have intended all along to come in herself; but that, had she announced so, there could have been a large contingent of fans, paparazzi, what have you, awaiting her arrival. It was thus most likely a routine ploy of hers to say someone else would come by, and then she’d just do it herself. (The Chinese would have, no doubt, been taken aback by such self-reliance by an “important person”.)

So, just as my job afforded me the gratuitous opportunity to encounter famous people in the music business (not to mention famous actors, ballet dancers, etc.), and this one interaction with Callas, I missed out on the chance to actually hear Callas sing live. In 1973 and 1974, she and tenor Giuseppe di Stefano gave a series of dual concerts that, famously, were a commercial success but an artistic failure, as it was well known that both singers were in vocal decline by then. It was in 1974 that the venture came to the U.S. and, especially as a Patelson employee, I had the option of obtaining tickets. I declined, to my everlasting regret. I knew that I simply did not like the sound of her voice; but I did not yet have sufficient appreciation of her artistry and status as a legend. Of course, it could not have been predicted that she would die so soon after. It is ironic, since I had made a point of going to hear pianistic eminences, even in relative decline, just so I could have the experience of having heard them live. Thus, I did go to recitals by the likes of Artur Rubinstein, Rudolf Serkin, Robert Casadesus, Guiomar Novães, and of course Horowitz. I think I heard Horowitz in recital about a dozen and a half times in all. (Of all these, the only one possibly in actual decline may have been Novães, the Brazilian pianist who was quite old by then. Her recital's first half, at Hunter College, was marked by numerous errors, and it was hard to listen to; but she came back after intermission having rallied her resources, giving a stellar performance.) 

Having seen Rubinstein at Patelson’s in my early years there, I finally got to meet Horowitz near the end. It was actually just two months before he died that I got to shake his hand. This is a story for another occasion. I went to hear Alicia de Larrocha while still in college in a recital in Carnegie Hall (most of my favorite concerts have been there), probably in 1970. She played Grieg’s rarely programmed piano sonata (it has been recorded by Glenn Gould). It’s a point of perverse pride that I was there for that; Harold C. Schonberg, in his NY Times review, described that performance to perfection as “like dropping a bowling ball onto a marble floor”.

If I was a fool not to go hear Callas (and I also foolishly never went to hear Led Zeppelin), I did go (again to Carnegie) to hear the farewell recitals of Callas’s supposed rival Renata Tebaldi and of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

In the case of Tebaldi, there was also not much of her gloried voice left; but the occasion was not at all about her vocal art but about the love fest between her and her fans, the flowers, the prolonged series of encores interrupting seemingly endless ovations. 

In the case of Schwarzkopf, well it was a cooler affair altogether, but of similar ilk. Incidentally, the one time I met Schwarzkopf in person, at a hotel outside Salzburg Austria where Maxine and I were staying and where Schwarzkopf was also in residence in conjunction with a master class she was giving, she made a point of being rude to me. All I had done was avail myself (during the day) of the Bösendorfer grand piano in our hotel room (Motel Sechs es war nicht!) that had supposedly previously been used by Leonard Bernstein (no relation to Maxine) : “Oh, so YOU are the one that’s been keeping me awake!” (Well, I would hope my playing wouldn’t put you to sleep, Bitch!) 

I am also happy that Amanda and I had the chance to go to BB King’s to see Carol Channing, another living legend. Elvis Presley, not living, gave a concert at Nassau Coliseum that I got to see less than a year before he "left the building" for good. He was a shocking caricature of his former self, but I was there. Oh, and I partly made up for missing the Callas-di Stefano event by going along to hear him in a Vienna concert with Maxine in 1985. It was a program ostensibly presenting his students or protégés. But there were a handful of items on the program which he himself sang… and then there was – guess what – a prolonged series of encores.

Verily I say unto you, my children, if you keenly admire an artist who is still appearing anywhere but whom you've never seen, even if they are past their prime, by all means GO GO GO! Even if it's the 4th annual farewell tour, some day, the chance will no longer be there. You will not want to have missed out.