Callas: Images of a Legend
by Attila Csampai, Anne Heritage
Category: Photography

The fascination surrounding Maria Callas (1923-1977), her personality, and voice has today-thirty years alter her death-taken on cultic dimensions. Preserved on innumerable studio and live recordings, the art of Maria Callas has also enthralled the generation of opera fans who did not experience her on stage. And her fairy-tale biography-glamorous, but not without tragedy-is no less captivating. This volume, containing photographs of her stage appearances, portraits, press photos, and private snapshots, is an attempt to understand in pictures and in words a unique figure of the opera world and stardom. It was not conceived as a biography of the artist in the traditional sense but rather as a study of an incomparable musical genius and her relations with both her artistic and non-artistic friends and associates. Photographers from all over the world have contributed to this unusual pictorial documentation, dedicated to the legendary artist and woman, Maria Callas. The images testify to her overpowering stage presence and her out-standing acting abilities. This volume includes an introduction by the Munich musicologist and publicist Attila Csampai and a complete chronology of Maria Callas' stage appearances. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Maria Callas' death on September 16, 2007, we are publishing the original 1995 volume in an unchanged reprint.