Customer Reviews

Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

With so much biographical literature already available on Maria Callas, any new volume at this point, almost a quarter century after her death, had better be prepared to offer something truly new in the way of either information or insight. Although Anne Edwards is a respected biographer of famous, unhappy women (i.e., Viven Leigh, Princess Diana of Wales), her latest effort does not, on the whole, meet this standard.

There are new details about Callas' life that pique the interest: a closer recounting of her miserable years in wartime Greece, painting her mother Litza in even blacker colors than in previous material; gossip about Onassis' encounters with other famous women (I had never heard, for example, of his alleged youthful affair with another diva, Claudia Muzio); and more detail about the tangled web that was woven after her death, when the pianist Vasso Devetzi, who had befriended her in her last years, swindled her mother and sister out of literally millions of dollars from the singer's estate. These tidbits are recounted with enough authority to make the reader wonder where the information came from, since Edwards provides only scanty documentation about her sources. Her refutation of Nicholas Gage's claim of there having been a Callas-Onassis "love child" proves to be largely assertion and re-interpretation of existing fact. Set against this is the mostly familiar retelling of stories that have been told ad nauseam--the feud with Bing, the Rome walkout--perpetuating in some cases falsehoods that have been disproven. Edwards proves unable to shed new light on what created the excitement about Callas in the first place--her vocal and dramatic abilities that made her the most charismatic operatic performer of her time. A plethora of careless misspellings that could easily have been checked (Renata "Tibaldi", "Katrina" Paxinou for example), further undermines credibility when she attempts to address the diva's career.

The reader who wants true insight into Callas' unique artisty should investigate vastly superior writing by John Ardoin, Gerald Fitzgerald, George Jellinek and Michael Scott. As far as gossip about her life is concerned there are any number of books by people who actually knew Callas. For that matter, Arianna Stassinopoulos' effort from the early eighties is better written, and if she plagiarized her material, as some assert, she at least stole from authoritative sources.

Not having read any biographies on Maria Callas before, I can't judge against other authors' works on the subjects. ...I really enjoyed this version of Callas' work and art. I will second the ... opinion ... of Anne Edwards omitting dates/years when recounting major events--it did make it difficult to place these events in their proper context/chronology.

However, overall I found the book's emphasis on Callas personal life as well as her artistic life to make for a very well-balanced view. I would recommend it to anyone interested not only in opera, but in the life of a great legend! One other shortcoming would be Edwards' lack of attention to the details of Callas' performances--this is not a technical look at her voice, but a general overview of her unique gifts of displaying real emotion through her voice and gestures, both on the stage and in the recording studio.

Viva La Divina...

This is not yet another sensational biography of Maria Callas. It was difficult to come with a new outlook of Callas' life and career and Anne Edwards hasn't tried to do that. She has tried, and possibly succeeded in balancing Callas the Artist and Maria The Woman, a feat attempted by many previous biographers, but hardly ever successfully. For a purely musical history of Callas, Ardoin remains the ultimate reference. Also, Edwards omits certain anecdotes inextricably linked with Callas, such as her return at La Scala as Anna Bolena in 1958 (after the Rome walkout) when she hurled her lines at the public and won them over by doing just that, and takes liberties with other stories (for example, she only attacked Ghiringhelli at her last Scala performance of "Pirata", not at every performance ; there are other such examples). It would have been helpful for the serious reader to know where Ms. Edwards got some of her more sensational information (Callas' sexual relationship with Visconti, Meneghini's supposed homosexual proclivities, etc). Was she able to interview Callas' maid and butler, Bruna and Ferrucio, who apparently only agreed to open themselves to Nicholas Gage ? In spite of its imperfections, I would consider this one of the best Callas biographies to-date. Twenty-four years after her death, Maria Callas remains the most fascinating character ever to have graced the operatic stage. Whether she did have a child by Onassis or not won't alter the fact that she was an incredible performer, a magnificent singer, and probably a very decent although troubled and ultimately very unhappy human being.

I'd disagree with those here who ... this book. Actually it's about as good as any one-volume Callas bio available. Its focus is very much on the person, not the artist. And Edwards has an irritating habit of not giving years with dates, so that chronology is sometimes hard to follow. But on the whole I found this book consistently interesting and well researched.

Edwards' bio of Callas borders too much on the tabloidish side, hardly on her career. Certain sections reads like she was pulling an alnighter in writing it, and the last two pages had serious editing problems. Try Callas works by John Ardoin, Henry Wisneski and Michael Scott

This biography of Maria Callas is the worst kind of tabloid trash. Derivative, poorly written and researched, riddled with errors and inaccuracies, it can't even begin to compete with other, better books on the Diva. Its primary concern is Maria Callas' sex life, and in fact the author appears obsessed with sex - who is getting it and who is not, who is cheating on whom, who is a great lover and who is a lousy lover, and who is gay and who is straight. Of Callas the Artist you will learn little here

The book reads like a Harlequin Romance version of Callas' life, with breathless, overwritten prose that runs the gamut from annoying to sick-making. Worst of all is the endless stream of factual inaccuracies, many of them real howlers, which expose not only the shoddy research and editing but also the author's embarassing ignorance of matters operatic.

I'm giving this book one star because I have to in order to publish this review. But if I had the option, I would not give it any at all.

Don't waste your time or money on this turkey.

This new biography on Callas is in my very personal opinion a complete disaster. It does not ad anything important or even new to the well known story of the sopranos life , maybe thats because that was not the idea behind the book, however the reason why I decided to buy it in the first place was because in this book the author would be presenting us with a theory that completely refutes the story that appeared on a recent book about a secret child that Callas probably had with Onassis.I have to say that Edwards theory does not hold a single drop of water concerning the secret child story.The book gets at times boring and confusing nevertheless I am giving it two stars for the authors effort , but if you are on the look for an interesting book on Callas life this is probably not it.

The competition for "Worst Book On Maria Callas" is stiff, but this one is a real contender for the title. It is filled with inaccuracies, poorly written, and it adds nothing to the sum total of what we know about Maria Callas. The author can't even get her subject's birth date right - not something to inspire confidence in the quality of research. The only thing that got me past the first few chapters was the same impulse that motivates one to rubberneck at a grisly highway accident.

Actually, my previous statement about this book not adding anything to the sum total of our knowledge of Callas, is not entirely accurate. If the burning question about Callas that has been keeping you awake at nights is, "When and where did Callas first perform oral sex on Aristotle Onassis?" this is the book for you. (Granted, this tidbit of gossip is based on third-hand hearsay that no self-respecting biographer would repeat. But hey, even Anne Edwards has to make a living.)

Don't waste your money on this barker.

If you are new to Callas this book is a good overview of her life while skimping on her art. Throughout the book every performance of Maria's, from her time as a child until the start of her final tour seemed to be either great or super-great. Only during her final worldwide tour is it said her voice was past it's peak.

And nowhere in the book is Callas ever described as a thougtless and egotistical artist until the second to last chapter when we learn she "was obsessively self-centered" and that "she saw people in relation to herself and seldom the other way around". It's jarring to hear Edwards describe her subject in anything but glowing praise. And the last chapter of Maria's death and battle over her estate ends abruptly with the death of her self-appointed executor.

Maria Callas deserves a better biography than this and other reviewers have mentioned works by other biographers if you want a more definitive story of her life and art. But this will satisfy anyone's thirst for the gossip of her life.

I loved this book and I am reading it for my second time. I am 14, I sing opera, and Maria Callas is my idol!