Paris, 16th September 1976. Maria Callas dies in her Paris apartment at N 36 Avenue George Mandel. The great soprano is only 53 years old. Ferruccio Mezzadri, her faithful butler, is beside her.
Maria Callas, the black pearl, is a theatre monologue by Federica Nardacci in which the “Divina” comes alive through the memories of Ferruccio Mezzadri who served Maria Callas for twenty years.
Ferruccio plays poker with Maria. He accompanies her on her travels. He looks after her during the last years she spends behind the windowpanes of her apartment waiting to be remembered, even for one moment, by that same world which once adored her.
After a first reading I am taken. When Federica calls me to ask if I like her script and if I want to play Ferruccio I immediately say yes. It’s an offer I cannot refuse. I immediately start reading numerous biographies on Callas. I watch whatever I can find on her : interviews, documentaries, films. For weeks I only think about Maria, I only listen to Maria, I only see Maria. I get inside her desperate solitude, but also inside her incomparable tenacity, inside her pride which never betrays the slightest weakness. At the same time I try to imagine Ferruccio in his role of keeper of memories, of faithful guardian, of platonic lover, victim of an impossible love.
Sophie Aldred’s direction shares my idea of extreme minimalism. The story unfolds between a chair and the front of the stage whilst in the background images of Maria keep running showing her at the peak of a beauty conquered through amazing sacrifices and also as a young woman crushed by her mother’s vanity.
Claudio Di Meo’s incidental music echoes Maria’s voice which in some parts of the play resonates in me. At times in fact Ferruccio becomes Maria. After twenty years of coexistence that’s perfectly plausible. Inadvertently Ferruccio moves like her, thinks like her, speaks with Maria’s words. A fascinating game.
That’s the essence of an actor’s work. Becoming someone else. Someone different from you. Someone who has suffered more deeply. Someone who has been more daring. Someone who died in the prime of life or lived for too long and so on.
Ferruccio went back to Piacenza, the town where he was born and where he lives today. He is 83 years old and doesn’t talk much. Federica spoke to him on the phone a couple of times. She got from him the green light to tell a story he can’t tell. Since16th September 1977 Maria’s memory lives in silence: Maria Callas’s silence. Ferruccio’s biggest achievement : the black pearl.
“I have asked myself many times what it truly was. I have searched desperately for it. I have tried to find it in the solitude , in the immobility , in the absence …and I finally found it : Silence.
Maria Callas, the black pearl by Federica Nardacci
with Marco Gambino
directed by Sophie Aldred
Incidental music by Claudio Di Meo.
The monologue was presented for the first time at the Steiner school Theatre in Kings Langley on 23rd February 2018.
Next presentation on 19th March at the Tristan Bates Theatre. London.
