The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography : 9781739286347

2024 ARSC AWARDS WINNER: BEST HISTORICAL RESEARCH IN RECORDED CLASSICAL MUSIC

"The Callas Imprint is a revelation: a book worthy of anyone who is interested in learning more about how to live, and live as freely as they will their life to be."-OperaWire

"Of all the biographies of La Divina, this one is for sure the most complete... A masterpiece of scientific rigour."-OperaLife Italy

"This book resembles Callas' masterful ease on stage, the artistic precision-passion balance she manifests, a reward of the many overtime rehearsal hours for which Callas was often criticized by co-stars."-Midwest Book Review

"This deeply researched book... surveys what feels like every twist and turn in the great operatic soprano's life and career."-American Record Guide

"A dense, well-organized narrative... Tells you everything you'll ever need to know about Callas in impressive detail."-BBC Music Magazine

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 labor 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 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.