The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography 2 Dec 2023

Callas signing Callas. Credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY
Coating opera's roles in opulence, Maria Callas (1923-1977) is a lyrical enigma.
Seductress, villainess, and victor, queen and crouching slave, she is a gallery of guises instrumentalists would kill to engineer… made by a single voice.
But while her craftsmanship has stood the test of time, Callas’ image has contested defamation at the hands of dirt-diggers and opportunists: saboteurs of beauty.
Twelve years in the making, this voluminous labour of love explores the singer with the reverence she dealt her heroines. The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography reaps never-before-seen correspondence and archival documents worldwide to illustrate the complex of their multi-faceted creator - closing in on her self-contradictions, self-descriptions, attitudes and habits with empathic scrutiny. It swivels readers through the singer's on- and offstage scenes and flux of fears and dreams... the double life of all performers.
In its unveiling of the everyday it rolls a vivid film reel starring friends and foes and nobodies: vignettes that make up life.
It's verity. It's meritable storytelling.
Not unlike the Callas art.