cover image Callas: Images of a Legend

Callas: Images of a Legend

Attila Csampai. Stewart, Tabori, & Chang, $75 (264pp) ISBN 978-1-55670-483-3

She was brilliantly, if sometimes erratically, talented and she developed beauty, style and a tragic mythos. In 165 duotone and color photographs, Callas traces the development of Maria Kalogeropoulos from a pudgy Greek voice student to one of the ultimate divas and high culture's answer to Marilyn Monroe. Along with an essay by Attila Csampai, a bibliography, a list of operatic roles and a chronology of appearances, there are pictures of Maria Callas with her husband, Giovanni Battista Menghini, Ormandy, Van Karajan, Churchill, Onassis and, ultimately, alone.