To mark the 100th anniversary of Maria Callas’s death, let’s talk about a word that, in her day, was still used as an accolade for women performers, especially opera singers, at the very top of their profession. Whereas today it’s become an all-purpose term of abuse applied to just about anybody who exhibits haughty behaviour. What do we mean by 'diva', and who were the great divas?
The word ‘diva’ means goddess in Latin. And until our own era it meant goddess in showbiz too. In fact, Callas’s fans nicknamed her La Divina, the divine – the ultimate diva. It implied not just incredible talent but something perhaps even more powerful: a charismatic force that reached out and mysteriously touched the hearts of millions.
'Their fractured lives make them irresistible'
How to explain that? In his fascinating book Charisma in Politics, Religion and the Media, the theology professor David Aberbach suggests that the public figures with the greatest mass appeal are likely to be individuals damaged by unstable or unpleasant childhoods and by their subsequent struggles to find happiness. He argues that their fractured lives make them irresistible to millions of followers who have troubled lives of their own.
That was certainly true of Callas, who was exploited, abused and discarded by just about everyone who got close to her – from her own mother to the ghastly Aristotle Onassis. But it’s also true of numerous other showbiz divas from her era. Think of Billie Holiday, Édith Piaf, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland. All had deep emotional scars, and their fans loved them for it.
As the 20th century moved on, however, the description ‘diva’ came to signal another, less sympathetic character trait. A charitable description might be ‘uncompromising attitude’ or ‘quest for perfection’. Uncharitably, the word diva now evoked arrogance, high-handedness, rudeness or even megalomania.
'A terrifying, self-righteous fervour'
Psychologically, it’s easy to see how the first trait led to the second. The diva compensates for all the bad things that have happened to her by inflicting dictatorial behaviour on those around her. Demands that seem completely unreasonable to other people seem perfectly logical, in fact necessary, in her mind. Or as Callas once snapped: ‘Don’t talk to me about rules, dear. I make the goddam rules.’
Those demands can often be ludicrous. Kathleen Battle, the soprano famously fired by the Metropolitan Opera in New York for subjecting every other member of the cast to what was described as ‘withering criticisms’, once allegedly phoned her agent from the back of a limousine to demand that he phone the chauffeur and instruct him to turn down the air-conditioning.
Sometimes, however, a diva’s demands seem fuelled by a self-righteous fervour so powerful that it terrifies all who encounter her. Such was the case, I believe, with Jessye Norman.
Since boyhood I had adored her majestic voice. Then, as a young journalist, I met her at a press lunch. She not only treated every question as if it were a hand grenade that needed hurling back at the questioner, she also said something quite vile to a waitress who had got her order wrong. I never stopped being wowed by her singing, but for a while I cooled to her as a human being.
'Far fewer "impossible" divas in opera today than in pop culture'
Then I read more about her early life. She grew up in the still-segregated south of the United States, before training for a profession – opera singing – in which (despite such pioneers as Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price) there were almost no other black people. Despite her one-in-a-million voice, the young Norman was on the receiving end of countless casual or deliberate racist slights.
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It had an effect. She wrapped herself in an impregnable cloak of entitlement. What appeared to me, at that lunch, like sheer bad manners and gracelessness was, I later realised, more the determination of a proud, hugely talented woman to be treated with the respect, indeed awe and reverence, that she felt she deserved. Treated like a goddess, in other words.
I get the impression that there are far fewer ‘impossible’ divas around in opera today than there are in, say, pop culture. Perhaps that’s just as well.
If every operatic superstar refused to go on stage unless surrounded by 20 white kittens and 100 doves (as Mariah Carey notoriously demanded before switching on the Christmas lights at the Westfield shopping centre), opera would be in even more desperate financial straits than it is.
But nobody who heard Maria Callas or Jessye Norman in their primes ever said they were ‘more trouble than they’re worth’. They were goddesses. Rightly or wrongly, you forgave them everything.
