Astrogation and Milestones
Journal: IMISCOE research series
Year: 2024

Abstract ‘I cannot live without opera: I always wanted to be an opera star, like Maria Callas or Anna Netrebko, to sing in best theaters and to live in different countries’. This is the de jour statement that I have heard from all my informants. All of them admit longing since childhood to become a global opera star, thus creating the narrative aura of mysticism and magic around their (pre)adolescent ‘elite career desire’. Such statements as ‘I knew I was destined to be an international opera st