This Europe: Dark side of a diva goes under hammer

Unpublished letters by Maria Callas auctioned by Christie's in Rome yesterday chart the inner journey of the most famous singer of her age as she swung from the enjoyment of success on board her millionaire lover's yacht, to abandonment and a thirst for revenge, alone in Paris.

The world saw the captivating diva on stage at La Scala or Covent Garden – "the most magnetic stage performer of her time" as Frank Granville-Barker called her – and the fabulous beauty living the high life.

But the letters from Callas to her singing teacher, Elvira de Hidalgo, show the dark side of the story. "It's cruel and it isn't true," she wrote in great distress in October 1969, nine days after her lover Aristotle Onassis married Jackie Kennedy.

"The worst thing is that he didn't say anything to me. After I'd spent nine years by his side, I think he was obliged to do that – or at least not to let me learn about it in the papers. But I think he's crazy, and I'm going to wipe him out of my mind." That letter alone went for $6,000 (£3,880) yesterday. In all, 11 lots of letters and photographs went to undisclosed buyers for some $20,000 – $5,000 more than the reserve price.

When news of the Onassis-Kennedy liaison broke, she wrote: "I'm doing all right ... but I've been given a huge smack ... I'll just try to survive these coming few months."

Survive she did: in a comeback at the Royal Festival Hall in 1973, young fans "pressed forward to touch her hands", wrote Granville-Barker, "as though she were a goddess". Now we know a little more about the suffering person within.