The story resonated for years as a staple of Dallas' journalistic folklore. It happened in the 1960s. The setting was Love Field, with the emphasis on "love." The late John Ardoin, then the classical music critic for The Dallas Morning News, arrived at the airport in eager anticipation of once again meeting the woman whose voice, whose career, whose very being was the object of his obsession.
He was the critic and she his beloved diva. Her name was Maria Callas.
She died in 1977 at the too-young age of 53. In its obituary, The New York Times described her as a "soprano whose intensely dramatic portrayals made her the most exciting opera singer of her time."
Born in Louisiana of Cajun ancestry, Ardoin died in Costa Rica in 2001 at age 66. He became music critic of The News in 1966, retiring in 1998, and was, according to many, the journalistic laureate of Callas' rich career. He wrote no fewer than four books about her, prompting the British newspaper The Guardian to eulogize the critic by saying: "As with all his work, his writing on the diva was as entertaining as it was well-informed."
He was, The Guardian acknowledged, "best known for his friendship with and writing on Maria Callas. Ardoin, an ebullient, forthright figure, was a lively writer, his literary personality rivaling his character in raciness and volubility."
No one who witnessed the scene at Love Field would dare say otherwise. Robert D. "Bob" Compton, 91, who worked at The News from 1956 to 1998, said the best story about the Love Field meeting was told for years by the late Joe Laird, a photographer who accompanied Ardoin to the airport for his reunion with Callas and who knew how to spin a story.
"It happened during one of the times Callas returned to Dallas," Compton said. "Joe went along to take pictures for Ardoin. Callas got off the plane, and they met each other in the [terminal] lobby. John starts shouting, 'Madama! Madama! Madama!' In return, Callas starts shouting, 'John, John, John!' And then they embrace in the middle of the lobby."
The spontaneous display was the essence of emotion and exuberance, Compton said. All the while, stunned passersby looked on, startled by the openness of such affection.
As close as they were, however, the two were not lovers, as far as anyone knows. Ardoin, his friends say, was gay. As one friend put it, the two were so close, it's fair to say that they maintained "a Will & Grace friendship" for much of their adult lives.
Friends say that, when Callas came to Dallas, she often spent hours at Ardoin's home, which contained a vast vinyl record collection, many of them recordings by Maria Callas.
At one point, she was so distraught over her 1968 breakup with Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis — he dumped her for Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the widow of President John F. Kennedy — that Callas flew to Dallas to be consoled by Ardoin.
Her relationship with Onassis is just one of the subjects she discusses in the new film, Maria by Callas: In Her Own Words, which shows at Dallas' Magnolia Cinema through Dec. 13.
It is not overstating it, nor is it unfair to say, Compton notes, that Ardoin was obsessed with Callas. Deeply so. He wrote four books about her for a reason.
Indeed, his obsession with the diva at her musical peak calls to mind the heartbreaking scene in the 1993 movie Philadelphia, when the lead character Andrew Beckett, played by Tom Hanks in an Oscar-winning performance — Beckett is dying of AIDS — listens to and interprets the aria "La mamma morta," sung spellbindingly by Callas in the opera Andrea Chénier.
"Sometimes, I think Ardoin was responsible for making Callas what she was," Compton said, "especially in her comeback years. Ardoin was her most fervent fan who was writing in those days."
Scott Cantrell, former classical music critic of The News, now covering the beat as a freelancer, says Callas was an important figure in the history of Dallas opera. As Cantrell once wrote in a piece for Opera News: "So when Big D set out to start an opera company, back in 1957, it went for the ultimate in brand names. Maria Callas, then at the height of her fame, strode out in front of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on Nov. 21 to inaugurate what then was billed as the Dallas Civic Opera. The diva appeared only in a concert of opera excerpts, but the next night, the company mounted L'Italiana in Algeri with Giulietta Simionato. The flamboyant production was designed and directed by a young Italian named Franco Zeffirelli, in his U.S. debut."
Callas reappeared in Dallas in La Traviata in 1958 and, the next week, in Médéa. In 1959, she returned to headline Lucia di Lammermoor and later that month reprised the title role in Médéa.
Her track record would indicate she loved her trips to Dallas. But it was more than that, says John Anders, who spent 33 years at The News, mostly as a columnist. Her friendship to Ardoin was definitely a draw, Anders said, and the two reveled in their own little pleasures.
"When she would come to town, she was a hot dog freak," Anders said with a laugh. "Ardoin would pick her up at Love Field and drive her straight to NorthPark. Do you remember the Orange Julius near Penney's at NorthPark? She loved their hot dogs, and she loved an Orange Julius. Shoppers are coming out of J.C. Penney and here's Maria Callas eatin' a hot dog."
In his obituary of Ardoin, which was published in The News, former music critic Olin Chism noted one of many special moments in the Ardoin-Callas relationship: "He once squired her around NorthPark Center when she was distraught over her breakup with Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis." He was, Chism wrote, "the foremost expert on her life and career, noting that "his book Callas at Juilliard inspired playwright Terrence McNally to write the Tony Award-winning play Master Class." Upon his death, Walter Cronkite, Beverly Sills and Van Cliburn openly mourned his passing, saying that they too were Ardoin's friends. In a 1997 piece, Dallas' D magazine called him "one of America's powers in music."
The new movie documents Callas' tempestuous relationship with the press, which made her rare friendship with Ardoin even more meaningful. During a time when she was hounded by the international news media, he stood out for being a confidante, someone she trusted.
All good things come to an end, of course, and so it was in the relationship between the critic and the diva. In 1974, with her voice in tatters and death peering over her shoulder, Callas performed. And Ardoin panned her.
"He wrote a critical review, and that was the end of that," Cantrell said. "Apparently, she never forgave him."
It was, however, one of the reasons Anders said he respected Ardoin as a journalist.
Ardoin was, Anders said, "a mercilessly accurate and truthful guy. He had more guts than anybody. He was fearless. John could not not be who he was. He just didn't think there were choices on those things," hence his critical review of Callas in 1974.
"No one in America knew — or cared — more about Maria Callas," Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Martin Bernheimer once said of Ardoin, "but his close association with that historic diva did not preclude a totally objective assessment of her virtues and, perhaps more important, her frailties."
Ardoin's most critical piece, appearing in The News on March 24, 1974, did indeed focus on frailties. He sought to offer what he called "a harder and more rational look at that emotional evening in the Music Hall" at Fair Park that had taken place two weeks earlier.
The ensuing pan reads like the missive of a talented, insightful critic but comes nowhere close to the sentiments of a friend, which most journalists would say Ardoin should have never become — and if he had, well, then, he shouldn't be reviewing her.
Callas had last sung in 1965, beginning a self-imposed exile of almost nine years. Ardoin compared the diva of 1974 to a once-great dancer or athlete facing their twilight years and struggling to cope. The passage of time alone, he wrote, demands the utmost of an artist seeking to compensate for the erosion of natural gifts.
And then he really zeroed in.
"The surprising thing about the Dallas appearance of this woman, who is a super-professional and has always stood for the highest musical standards, was her lack of preparation," he wrote, adding later: "While the artistry of her greatest years could never be diminished by her singing today, it was undeniably tarnished for many. If this sounds harsh, remember, it was Callas herself who set her own lofty standards, who forced us to seek more from music than we had before."
For it was Callas, he wrote, "whose overwhelming expressive gifts established a new way of listening to music and thinking about it."
Final dagger: "That Callas no longer exists, as of this moment."
Less than four years later, she would be dead. In sweeter times, friends say, "Madama" appreciated the fact that "John," perhaps more than anyone, got her. He understood her.
And that created a bond that lingered for decades, until, of course, anger intervened and ended the spell between the critic and the diva.
Meredyth Grange, a researcher for The News, contributed to this report.
