Cast of characters:
Author: Jerome Charyn
“Maria”: Eden Riegel, star of All My Children, narrator of MARIA LA DIVINA audiobook (and Jerome Charyn’s very own stepdaughter.)
Eden Riegel as herself
Here is a photo of Maria Callas and Jerome Charyn when they were both 43 years old
Author: it seems we are both holding a cigarette in this photo – do you smoke? I only held the cigarette for this particular photo – you can see I do it awkwardly, although it is one of my favorite photographs (taken by Anne Billson).
“Maria”: I started smoking with Ari and just kept it up – it cannot have helped my singing but all I cared about was to be with Ari.
Author: What do you say to those who called you difficult, temperamental and unreliable?
“Maria”: They don’t really understand all the preparation that goes into a single aria. They think I stand on stage and sing, as if I had a magic whistle in my throat. I don’t. I sing full voice at every rehearsal. I am always there in spirit – after a while, it wears you down.
Author: You died so very young. Would you wish to have lived longer?
“Maria”: I had little desire to live without Ari. Singing became a chore and I didn’t even have my voice. I loved him with my soul. I had nothing but a few medals and a Bulova watch.
“Maria”: When I read your novel I felt like you saw me as I was, my thoughts, my fears, my very words – how did you accomplish that?
Author: I couldn’t have written the novel without becoming you. You are my sister, my twin, my devil, my angel, my diva. I had become you almost like a cannibal devouring your flesh, a very sweet flesh.
Author: Did you think you would have a movie career after playing Medea for Pasolini?
“Maria”: In my dreams I thought I might become the new Sophia Loren, but when I saw the depth of what Pasolini wanted me to do, I knew we were in a wondrous wasteland and that very few people would come along. It was not a film, it was an act of murder and in this Pasolini succeeded. You can’t murder your own children and become a movie queen.
“Maria”: Do you see my life as a tragedy?
Author: No. There’s no one in the world who could have done Casta Diva in Norma the way you did. You were a goddess on stage, and every goddess has to pay a price.
Author: Is there any difference between the singer and the woman who sings?
“Maria”: I would like to be Maria, but there is La Callas that I have to live up to.
Author: Eden, tell me what it was like to read my novel out loud (poetically, you were recorded by the famed Outloud Audio!!)
Eden: I understood her more than I expected to, having played the daughter of a magnificent diva, Erica Kane in All My Children - as created by the incomparable Susan Lucci.
An intimate portrait of the world’s most iconic opera singer
Maria Callas, called La Divina, is widely recognized as the greatest diva who ever lived. Jerome Charyn’s Callas springs to life as the headstrong, mercurial, and charismatic artist who captivated generations of fans, thrilling audiences with her brilliant performances and defiant personality.
Callas, an outsider from an impoverished background, was shunned by the Italian opera houses, but through sheer force of will and the power and range of her voice, she broke through the invisible wall to sing at La Scala and headline at the Metropolitan Opera, forging an unforgettable career. Adored by celebrities and statesmen, the notable and notorious alike, her every movement was shadowed by both music critics and gossip columnists—until, having lost her voice, she died alone in an opulent, mausoleum-like Paris apartment.
In Charyn’s inimitable style, Maria La Divina humanizes the celebrated diva, revealing the mythical artist as a woman who survived hunger, war, and loneliness to reach the heights of acclaim.
Non-Fiction Biography | Historical [Bellevue Literary Press, On Sale: September 16, 2025, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781954276482 / eISBN: 9781954276499]
Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including RAVAGE & SON; Sergeant Salinger; Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin; In the Shadow of King Saul: Essays on Silence and Song; Jerzy: A Novel; and A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century. Among other honors, his work has been longlisted for the PEN Award for Biography, shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, and selected as a finalist for the Firecracker Award and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Charyn has also been named a Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture and received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York.
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