I first met the man at a party in Italy,on the Lido,La Maxwell Elsa introduced us,she and he fell in love with me,made sexual overtures, I turned her down and accepted him for who he was, a seducer, a lover, and the destroyer. I met him again at the Opera de Paris Gala recital, there and then decided that he must possess me, it was imperative for his standing,,wasn't I one the 5 most famous women of Europe at the time , Queen Elizabeth,Princess Margret, Brigitte Bardot and Edith Piaf,I was in good company, he must possess me the four others would not give him a second look. Fat chance ! Ari was then married to Tina Livanos, , of the famed Livanos shipping family.He set me up, invited Tita and I on the notorious three-week cruise along the Greek and Turkish coasts in the summer of 1959.I was a trap.
Onassis was compulsively unfaithful, and in 1964 he set his sights on the prestigious prize of Jacqueline Kennedy, who had taken a much noticed cruise on his yacht following the death of the Kennedys' newborn son in August 1963. After she entertained him at Sunday brunch in her Fifth Avenue apartment (''All the guests were men,'' according to a close friend of Callas), Onassis began sending her ''huge bunches of red roses.'' But within weeks after marrying Jackie in 1968, Onassis was back at Maria's doorstep in Paris ''shouting, whistling for Madame to let him in.''
As Callas lost her singing voice and Onassis suffered a series of tragedies -- the death of his only son and the suicide of Tina, his former wife -- as well as business reversals, the couple's devotion deepened, but she refused to be his lover as long as he remained married. When Onassis was dying in 1975, he took Maria's final gift, a red cashmere Hermès blanket, to the hospital, although neither Maria nor his wife was with him at his death. A heartbroken Callas died two years later.
''Onassis loved, but he never fell in love. He had the oriental view that a real man does not allow himself to be conquered by love. Maria, on the other hand, flooded Onassis with her love, surrendered totally.'' Gage's extensive research has unearthed revealing new facts about the couple as well, from the birth and death of a son in 1960 to a phone call Onassis made to Callas two days before his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy, asking her to come to Athens and ''save him,'' presumably by inciting a jealous Jackie to call off the wedding.
But journalistic overkill often slows the narrative to a crawl. The drama of the shipboard seduction collapses amid a deconstruction of when and where Onassis and Callas first had sexual relations. Nor does the reader need to know every document and source Gage consulted to pin down Onassis' birth date. He also has the annoying habit of boasting about his reporting. He repeatedly announces the circumstances of his interviews (''When I interviewed him in May of 1998 at his home near Lake Como''), making the book seem less the story of a fabled romance than a Baedeker of Gage's own odyssey as a reporter. Including photographs of himself with various sources adds to the impression that Gage considers himself as interesting as his subjects.
Every conscientious biographer makes countless phone calls and spends endless time tracking down elusive documents. But the details of such reporting and archival research belong in chapter notes that don't distract from the narrative. In this case, the author's notes are both sketchy and erratic, offering sources in some instances but ignoring many others. How does Gage know, for example, that John F. Kennedy exclaimed, ''For Christ's sake Jackie! Onassis is an international pirate!'' on hearing his wife was planning her cruise on the Onassis yacht?
Still, after years of erroneous accounts about Onassis and Callas, not to mention their own embroidered versions of their lives, Gage diligently sets the record straight. The most conspicuous falsehood that he demolishes is Callas's supposed abortion under duress from Onassis, first reported in a biography by Arianna Stassinopoulos and then popularized by Terrence McNally's play ''Master Class.'' But one wishes that Callas and Onassis didn't have to share the stage so often with their intrepid biographer.
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