Maria’s Mystery
Gabriele Annan, 6 November 1980
Maria: Beyond the Callas Legend
by Arianna Stassinopoulos.
Weidenfeld, 329 pp., £8.95, October 1980,0 297 77544 8 Show More
by Arianna Stassinopoulos.
Weidenfeld, 329 pp., £8.95, October 1980,
“... Maria Callas died almost exactly three years ago. Two months later Arianna Stassinopoulos was commissioned to write her biography. She was half-way through when she made the discovery that there were two Callases: La Callas, the diva of the legend, and Maria, the living suffering woman ‘beyond’. ‘And just as she was in danger of disappearing into a shimmer of ordinariness – of insecurities, of snobbery, of fears, of common humanity – I rediscovered her without illusions in all her real rather than her public greatness … It is this passion for life, for her art and for something unknown beyond both, that was compelling her and driving her forever on ... ”