In Verona,I met a wealthy,successful businessman twenty nine years older than I was,and we began dating.He was single,hard working , did not have many interests except his work and opera. His universe was Verona and Venice,I don’t think he had been anywherere and nor wanted to.He loved his city and showed me around,the old churches,their graveyards , the pallazzos and piazzas and the houses of Romeo and Juliet.Like everyone I thought that they existed only in Shakespeare’s imagination.They were real , had lived and loved and died in that romantic city.The year was 1947 and there still was a shortage of gas so we walked and walked.I felt like Juliet and he was my Romeo.Titta was the first man who had ever showed a romantic interest in me and I fell in love.I was desperate,it was him or death.After Gioconda, no theatre manager wanted me,I was too fat,dressed like a gypsy,not Italian,my voice was too metallic,altogether a repulsive combination.I was unwanted,and they made me feel it.
However destiny was waiting for me,for Titta’s love and support saved me, gave me the time to establish myself .There was de Hidalgo,and there will be Serafin and Visconti, but without Meneghini there would not have been a Callas.I had no money,was dead broke, had no work nor hope of work,nowhere to go,no friends or relatives in after- war Italy.Because he loved me ,the way I was, fat,obese,poor, rejected by everyone,and believed in me that I became who I am.He paid for my food,hotel room and private coaching,without him I would not have survived.He did not take advantage of me, he supported me out of pity,from the goodness of his heart.And we became lovers because I wanted it,not because he forced me.
We married in 1949, and Titta became my Manager until 1959,the year we separated.For ten years I was Maria Meneghini Callas,and proud of it.
