The Callas Imprint

2024 ARSC AWARDS FINALIST: BEST HISTORICAL RESEARCH IN RECORDED CLASSICAL MUSIC "Of all the biographies of La Divina, this one is for sure the most complete... A masterpiece of scientific rigour... This masterfully written volume is recommended to all those passionate about music and all those who study it."-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... The result archives nearly everything ever documented about and is as full-bodied, that is, polished as well as unvarnished, as Maria Callas."-Mari Carlson, Midwest Book Review"A dense, well-organized narrative... Tells you everything you'll ever need to know about Callas in impressive detail."-BBC Music MagazineCoating 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.