By David Gregson, San Diego Magazine Music/Dance Critic

Jacques Leiser admires a pink and yellow sunset from his superbly situated condominium at the north end of Balboa Park. He is reminiscing about the final days of opera legend Maria Callas.

"She was one of the most inspiring artists I have associated with," he says. "She gave everything for her art -- and all of a sudden she was dispossessed. There she was in her beautiful apartment in Paris, so lonely that she would have the chauffeur stay and play cards with her. Everybody had abandoned her."

Some say the world of opera has its own calendar. Events are dated B.C. or A.C - Before Callas or After Callas. La Divina, as she was dubbed by adoring Italians, died September 16, 1977, in premature retirement. Even her voice had left her. She was 53.

Born of Greek parents in New York, 2 December 1923, Callas left for Greece in 1937, becoming a student of the well-known soprano Elvira de Hildalgo. By 1942 Callas was singing major roles in Athens. In 1950 she sang Aida at La Teatro alla Scala, beginning nearly a decade as the theater's reigning diva. She had been extremely overweight, but she transformed herself into a slim and glamorous woman. In America she appeared with the Chicago Lyric, Dallas, and Metropolitan Opera companies, making headlines at the latter due to a quarrel with general manager Rudolf Bing that led to her dismissal.

During her years of glory, Callas's divorce from her first husband, Giovanni Batista Meneghini, and her affair with Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, plus her widely publicized cancellations in Rome and at the Edinburgh Festival, threatened to overshadow her true artistic stature. In the early 1960s she entered a period of catastrophic vocal decline, the exact causes of which are still debated. Today she is universally acknowledged as the complete dramatic and musical interpreter, and one of the greatest opera stars of all time.

This month the recording giant EMI is commemorating the 20th anniversary of her death by re-releasing 20 of the diva's legendary complete opera recordings in superbly re-mastered and (perhaps less superbly) re-packaged CD sets. First marketed in America on Angel Records, the Callas sets are of particular interest to Leiser who assisted the producers during the earliest Callas recording sessions at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan where Leiser was working on promotion and publicity for La Voce del Padrone, EMI's Italian wing.

Between 1953 and 1956, Leiser witnessed the births of many sets today considered essential in any worthwhile record library: The Victor da Sabata conducted Tosca with baritone Tito Gobbi and tenor Giuseppe di Stefano (being re-released as a CD-Rom with production photographs); the Tullio Serafin-led Norma, the Herbert von Karajan Madama Butterfly, and the Serafin Aida with tenor Richard Tucker and mezzo-soprano Fedora Barbieri. Leiser was also on the spot when the Pagliacci, La Forza del Destino, Il Turco in Italia, and Rigoletto sets began their journeys into recording immortality.

The Callas Leiser remembers is a substantially different creature than the frighteningly temperamental Fury of modern media mythology. Leiser describes a woman who was totally dedicated to her art, rarely temperamental without just cause, and thoughtful and kind to others -- even people she knew only casually.

"She was thoroughly professional," remembers Leiser, "and she would always redo the recording takes or whatever was required of her. During the tiring Norma sessions, she stayed at it until 2 a.m., even going through a major shift of venue: The stage at La Scala where the sessions took place was needed for something else. She didn't mind, but her colleagues, who were not as committed as she was, did show their irritation." Leiser recalls he had to order about 50 taxicabs for all the musicians get them home after this marathon session.

Unfortunately, despite her great talent and dedication, Callas frequently experienced vocal difficulties. "She suffered a lot because she was aware of her inadequacies," Leiser says. "Her voice sometimes did not have evenness between the registers, and the top could be unruly. She would compensate for this, and that was part of her artistry. On stage she was far greater than any of her colleagues. She was mesmerizing."

Leiser, who was one of many San Diegans who visited Civic Theatre recently to see Faye Dunaway's performance as Callas in McNally's Master Class, takes offense at the playwright's treatment of the diva. "She was always a lady," he said. "She never swore, never used four-letter words like the ones you hear in the play. She was always elegant, better than Italian countess. Off stage she was elegant in speech, in movement and everything."

Callas's manager in the early EMI days was her husband, Giovanni Batista Meneghini. "He deserves credit because he supported her. He abandoned his family for her. He was ostracized for marrying an American singer who was nothing at the time he married her. He had a very profitable business, and he gave up everything for her. He didn't know that much about music, but he was a fierce businessman."

In 1964, after 12 years at EMI, Leiser went into business for himself as an artists' manager. His clients would include dozens of the world's greatest pianists. "Before leaving EMI I wrote personal notes saying goodbye to all of my friends and associates, including Callas" he said. Later Callas sang Norma in Paris (1964) before a glittering audience of celebrities and political dignitaries. When it was all over, Jacques went backstage to congratulate Callas.

"She was still on stage, not in her dressing room," said Leiser. "When she saw me, she embraced me -- while she was still going out to take curtain calls-- and she said, 'Oh, I kept your note and I'm so sorry to hear you have left EMI! What are you doing now?' It was as if we were sitting together alone. At such a moment of success, how could she remember if I had written her a note three or four months before?"

But surely the famous Callas temperament in not all the figment of some press agent's imagination? "Well, if you stepped on her feet when it came to the work, she'd be temperamental," admits Leiser. "One time before a rehearsal she was asked to wait a bit for the famous pianist Wilhelm Backhaus to finish running over a concerto out on the stage. Callas would not put up with this. 'I don't care if it IS Backhaus,' she said. "I'm supposed to start my rehearsal at 3 o'clock. Tell him it's over.' Oh, she was adamant. But I didn't perceive it as oversized ego. She was a professional and did not want to lose five minutes of her working time. She needed every minute of it."

Leiser's picture of a caring and giving, even motherly Callas may astound some people. On her 1964 German tour with conductor Georges Prêtre, Prêtre cued the both the singer and orchestra incorrectly. Callas somehow signaled him -- calmly and elegantly, so as not to embarrass him -- to go back several measures.

After the concert, Leiser took Callas to Prêtre's hotel room where the guilty conductor was avoiding the reception. She sat him down on his bed and lectured like a mother. "Don't feel bad. You're an excellent conductor, and it could happen to anybody."

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing," said Lesier. "If Callas had been the raging prima donna of the newspapers, she would have been screaming, 'You ruined my performance!' But she went and consoled him instead!"

When Callas left Meneghini for Onassis, her emotional and vocal trouble accelerated. Onassis would take a prominent box at her performances and then fall asleep. When an EMI representative when to visit Callas on his yacht, the Cristina, Onassis complained about her vocalizing in her stateroom. "Oh, my God! Here we go again!"

Why did she have anything to do with such a man? "Well," said Leiser, "he was a wealthy Greek, an older man, and she wasn't going to be singing forever, after all. She was a good party person for him, but he had no respect for her art."

Leiser avoided Callas's tragic "comeback" world tour in 1974: "She probably needed the money. She hadn't worked in years. I couldn't bear to go. And at the end, the aria from Puccini's Manon Lescaut -- "Sola, perduta, abbandonata!" That tells it all. It's a Greek tragedy, the whole thing from beginning to end."

© 1997 by David Gregson