Dimensions
163 x 242 x 34mm
Maria Callas was without doubt the twentieth-century's most celebrated operatic diva. Her performances of the great dramatic soprano roles are remembered by all who heard or saw her. She blazed new paths, set new standards and changed the face of opera forever. Her recordings still sell briskly throughout the world, and, over a quarter of a century after her death, her scandalous affair with Aristotle Onassis is still discussed. Callas is both icon and myth, her private life from birth to death indelibly coloured by passion, vulnerability, rejection, the madness of a voracious press and personal tragedy.
In this new, vivid account Anne Edwards shows us the real Maria Callas, whose craving for affection and complex neurosis affected not only her life but her music. Rejected at birth by her ambitious mother who had lost a beloved son, she would struggle to gain her approval, winning it only by her ability to gain fame and fortune with her incredible voice, losing it when she dared to strike out for herself. She would be parted early from her father, suffer a lifelong battle against an eating disorder, painfully transform herself into a glamorous diva, marry a much older man who would betray her trust, and then fall passionately in love with the Greek tycoon who would in turn betray her slavish devotion by marrying, for his own personal gain, the widow the American President John F Kennedy.
The mystery of Callas's last days, the charlatan who preyed upon her, her private angst over Onassis, her thwarted affair with the homosexual Italian director Visconti and her traumatic New York childhood and youthful struggle to survive in war-torn Greece are told here in full for the first time.
