Here was the archetypal tale of the ugly duckling who with sheer willpower and courage of conviction transformed herself into the most beautiful of swans. Maria Calogeropoulos, the shy akward daughter of Greek immigrants, rose like a shooting star to become the greatest operatic diva this century. By applying the experiences and emotions of her own troubled life, Callas was able to climb inside the skin of each of her heroines and bring these often wretched women to life in a unique way. Yet Callas' greatest role was herself, the tempermental diva whose tantrums and walkouts were almost as sensational as her entrances, the consumate professional who had no patience with time-wasters or second-raters, the voluptuous siren whose ability to seduce brought her a series of relationships which were destined to be doomed; Oscar, the enemy soldier so cruelly wrenched from her; Rossi-Lemeni and Mangliveras, the opera stars who used her, only to find the tables turned on themselves; Meneghini, the man who fashioned her career and married her, only to dicover he could not tame the tigress; Visconti, Bernstein and Pasolini, homosexuals she attempted to 'cure', and the greatest love of her life, Aristotle Onassis, Whose death set her on a rapid downward spiral. Off and on stage, Maria Callas was the Sacred Goddess. This is her story.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
"Amazon USA is Janus, pure and simple. You get 5-stars reviews and tremendous praise...or you get 1-star reviews which are so poisonous (the July 2011 one for "Valentino", by Markus King being a prime example)that they defy belief. If someone leaves a 5-star review, you can guarantee that a poison review will pop up the next day. The homophobic Valentino female fans are the worst--easy to discern here, they cannot accept that he was gay, loathe anyone who suggests that he might have been, and have set up a hotbed of loathing against this author. There is of course a maxim to all of this: if Bret's books were SO bad, how come that he has been publishing for a quarter-century, and outselling ALL of his rivals?
Diary For 2011:
"Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend", April, to be followed by special foreign language mass-printings (Poland, Russia, Sweden, China, Japan), September-December.
"Freddie Mercury: Too Young, Too Soon", September.
Born in Paris in November 1954, Bret published his first biography, "The Piaf Legend", in 1988. His other bestsellers include biographies of Maria Callas, Mario Lanza, Gracie Fields, Elizabeth Taylor, Rudolph Valentino, George Formby, Rock Hudson, and around twenty more. His two biographies of Morrissey have sold in excess of 150,000 copies in the UK alone.
Bret loathes fan forums, another reason for the one-star reviews:
"They place their idols on pedestals, but they see the idols only as THEY want to see them, not as they really were. Really, I am SO flattered that they can devote so much time to attacking me, and it is such fun attacking them back--though of course they do not like having a taste of their own medicine!"
