Live Side By Side With the World’s Greatest Opera Star: Maria Callas
“If you love music truly you can only feel humble before its infinite potentialities and recognize one’s own limitations in serving it — perhaps at the cost of never knowing any lasting, consistent happiness.” — Maria Callas
A book 12 years in the making, The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography is a voluminous labor of love that juxtaposes the on- and off-stage personas of opera’s lyrical enigma Maria Callas — opening a window into the confounding double life of all performers while depicting Callas as she truly was: a relatable figure who had to balance real life with the creation of a stressful but exquisite art.
Author Sophia Lambton, a venerable classical music critic, mined 3,395 sources spanning 80 years and 21 countries (including never-before-seen correspondence and archival documents) to illustrate the complexity of Callas and her immeasurable talents. In doing so, Lambton closes in on Callas’ self-contradictions, self-descriptions, attitudes and habits like no one has before and with empathic scrutiny.
The book features never-published letters between Callas and her manager as well as notes taken during their phone conversations to unveil the soprano’s inner workings from 1953 until her death in 1977. Also included are missives between Callas and her legal separation lawyer; messages between the singer and conductors and artistic directors; and new interviews with those who knew Callas — all of which reinforce Callas’ authorial contributions to the world of opera.
Ultimately, _The Callas Imprint _makes Maria Callas into a relatable human being. It’s an artistic journey through the rocky 20th century from the eyes of an inimitable genius.
“Seductress, villainess and victor, queen and crouching slave, Callas is a gallery of guises instrumentalists would kill to engineer … made by a single voice.” — Sophia Lambton
About the Author
Sophia Lambton became a professional classical music critic at the age of 17 when she began writing for Musical Opinion, Britain’s oldest music magazine. Since then she has contributed to The Guardian, Bachtrack, musicOMH, BroadwayWorld, BBC Music Magazine and OperaWire, and has conducted operatic research around the world for The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography, the richly detailed account of Maria Callas published to coincide with her 100th birthday in December 2023.
Crepuscular Musings, Lambton’s cultural Substack (sophialambton.substack.com), provides vivid explorations of TV and cinema together with reviews of operas, concerts and recitals. The Crooked Little Pieces is her first literary saga. Currently she’s working on her second. She lives in London.
For more information, please visit https://www.thecrepuscularpress.com, or connect with the author on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn and Pinterest at @thecrepuscularpress.
Amazon
The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography
Publisher: The Crepuscular Press
Release Date: December 2, 2023
ASIN: B0BRYPL5WN (Kindle)
ISBN-13: 978-1739286323 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 978-1739286347 (paperback)
Available from Amazon.com
