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The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography Paperback – November 23, 2023

by Sophia Lambton (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 19 ratings
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"Of all the biographies of La Divina, this one is for sure the most complete… A masterpiece of scientific rigour… This masterfully written volume is recommended to all those passionate about music and all those who study it."—OperaLife Italy

"This book resembles Callas’ masterful ease on stage, the artistic precision-passion balance she manifests, a reward of the many overtime rehearsal hours for which Callas was often criticized by co-stars… The result archives nearly everything ever documented about and is as full-bodied, that is, polished as well as unvarnished, as Maria Callas."—Mari Carlson, Midwest Book Review

“A dense, well-organized narrative… Tells you everything you’ll ever need to know about Callas in impressive detail."—BBC Music Magazine


Coating opera's roles in opulence, Maria Callas (1923-1977) is a lyrical enigma.

Seductress, villainess, and victor, queen and crouching slave, she is a gallery of guises instrumentalists would kill to engineer… made by a single voice.

But while her craftsmanship has stood the test of time, Callas’ image has contested defamation at the hands of dirt-diggers and opportunists: saboteurs of beauty.

Twelve years in the making, this voluminous labor of love explores the singer with the reverence she dealt her heroines. The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography reaps never-before-seen correspondence and archival documents worldwide to illustrate the complex of their multi-faceted creator - closing in on her self-contradictions, self-descriptions, attitudes and habits with empathic scrutiny. It swivels readers through the singer's on- and offstage scenes and flux of fears and dreams... the double life of all performers.

In unveiling of the everyday it rolls a vivid film reel starring friends and foes and nobodies: vignettes that make up life.

It's verity. It's meritable storytelling.

Not unlike the Callas art.

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  1. Print length
    676 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    November 23, 2023
  4. Dimensions
    6 x 1.69 x 9 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1739286340
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1739286347
  7. See all details
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From the Publisher

The Callas Imprint A Centennial Biography title
This lists most of the never-published sources in the book
Stats on The Callas Imprint 12 years in the making 3395 sources from 21 countries
Callas quote "If you love music truly you can only feel humble before its infinitive potentialities"

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Is it fair to measure a biography against its subject? In this case, yes. This book resembles Callas' masterful ease on stage, the artistic precision-passion balance she manifests, a reward of the many overtime rehearsal hours for which Callas was often criticized by co-stars... The result archives nearly everything ever documented about and is as full-bodied, that is, polished as well as unvarnished, as Maria Callas."—Mari Carlson, Midwest Book Review

"A triple decryption—biographical, artistic and psychological... This work is not just one more book about this overexposed subject; quite the opposite—it finally completes our understanding."—Christophe Rizoud, Forum Opéra

"Sophia Lambton's meticulously researched, intense, lyrical magnum opus challenges the myths surrounding Maria fabricated by the press. This erudite biography doesn't just explore her life. Lambton shines a spotlight on Callas' craft critically evaluating the opera star's singing with consummate care and precision down to the minutest detail and vocal technique behind each aria and dramatic role."—Good Night to Read Blog

"After being initially daunted by the size of the book, I can now say, hand on heart, that I enjoyed learning about this incredible woman. I must also praise the author for her painstaking dedication in bring this story into print."—Milly Reynolds, Author

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The Crepuscular Press (November 23, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 676 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1739286340
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1739286347
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.16 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.69 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 19 ratings

About the author

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Sophia Lambton

Sophia Lambton

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Sophia Lambton became a professional classical music critic at the age of seventeen 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 conducted operatic research around the world for The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography, which was published to coincide with the soprano's one hundredth birthday in December 2023.

Crepuscular Musings – Lambton’s cultural Substack - provides vivid explorations of tv and cinema together with reviews of operas, concerts and recitals.

The first three volumes of The Crooked Little Pieces - her first literary saga - came out in 2022 and 2023.

Currently she's on the third part of her second.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
19 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Judith Kolata
5.0 out of 5 stars rare find - a fact-driven biography of Callas
Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2024
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The first thing I noted upon receipt of The Callas Imprint was its bibliography and voluminous notes —110 pages of them! The author has referenced nearly every line of her book with primary source material — correspondence, contracts, interviews, notes and documents from archival collections of opera companies, recording studios, directors, singers, critics, her agent, her lawyers, and extended family members. This documentation supports a well-written, comfortably paced, objective telling of the life of this remarkable artist. It is free of sensation and hyperbole, and absent are personal theories and unsubstantiated pronouncements all too common in other published biographies of the singer.

I found Lambton’s historical account immensely informative and open-minded. She also probes the technical artistry of Callas’ characterizations in detail using several examples from her recorded history, which I found of great interest. The final pages of Lambton’s tome offer a reverent summary, touching on Callas’ humanity and quest for perfection. The work deepened my respect for this unique artist.

Judith Kolata, Wagner Society of America board member
2 people found this helpful
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Skip Roads
4.0 out of 5 stars A Passion Project (Not Without Missteps) Hits the High Notes
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2024
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"The Callas Imprint" is, uniquely, a music critic's biography. Thus, in addition to the story of Callas' life, it offers numerous—if somewhat circumspect—descriptions of Callas performances that remain available to listeners via audio and video recordings.

Sophia Lambton tells Callas' story with candor; she admirably addresses the singer's all-too-human capacity for failures both big and small with fairness and celebrates her genius without reliance on quixotic idealization. She also includes informative synopses of operatic works and honors non-English lyrics in their original language, augmented with helpful translations. That said, for a project that Lambton makes known is the product 12 years' work, Callas is kept at something of a cold distance throughout its 500 pages.

While Lambton deserves praise and congratulations for bringing this project to fruition, the book does at times suffer from a lack of editing. The syntax is occasionally odd and strangely backweighted. There are simpler ways to express, for example, Callas' penchant for swimming ("In the aquatic realm she was no amateur."). Many of the author's word choices are better suited for Scrabble than clarity ("bespectacled," "gelid," "imploration"). The book is permeated by an over-reliance on "former" and "latter" sentence structure.

Lambton concludes with a well reasoned and well written synopsis of Callas' contributions to the arts that is more worthy of expansion than the many pages devoted to chronicling the singer's seemingly endless list of late-career cancelled engagements.

Despite its imperfections, "The Callas Imprint" delivers abundant knowledge and insight into Callas, opera, and what is required of anyone daring to endeavor in art.
6 people found this helpful
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Mari Carlson
5.0 out of 5 stars a sacrifice for art
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2024
Is it fair to measure a biography against its subject? In this case, yes. This book resembles Callas’ masterful ease on stage, the artistic precision-passion balance she manifests, a reward of the many overtime rehearsal hours for which Callas was often criticized by co-stars. A book-sized Legend at the end attest to the book’s twelve year labor. The result archives nearly everything ever documented about and is as full-bodied, that is, polished as well as unvarnished, as Maria Callas.
One need not be an opera lover to enjoy the book. As there is more to opera than voices, the book offers opera storylines and descriptions of sets and side plots between performers. Indeed, what this biography has over previous biographies and documentaries is the making of character, the intersection of Maria, the woman and human, and Callas, the artist. This is not a tabloid portrait. Its meat is not gossip and hearsay, rather, prioritizes Callas’ own words and actions. From a childhood dominated by a stage-mother, war, and many moves between and around Greece and New York, to conservatory, to a career managed (or mismanaged) largely by her husband, to a drawn out divorce and health troubles causing a slow receding from the stage, time taken up with travel and friendships, her life is opera enough, without commentary. Brief intros and outros allow her life to speak for itself.
Two small intermissions for photos sandwiched in the middle of roughly 600 pages show a text focused on what the news failed to present about this famous woman. While her relationship with Onassis is pervasive, so is her lifelong pursuit of serving opera at any cost. The writing is dense with introspection and a literary cadence. Callas purports to be simple. The read is not. It shies not away from Callas’ contradictions and conflicts. Nor does it dismiss these as outside the purview of her legacy.
There’s a saying that entertainment gives people what they want; art gives what they don’t yet know they want. In its exhaustive treatment of Callas from every vantage point - daughter, sister, wife, lover, friend, businesswoman, singer, teacher, and dog owner, among other roles - The Callas Imprint succeeds in showing Maria Callas sacrificing herself for art. As such, her act, as depicted in this biography, demands a long gaze into our own mirrors.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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kcg
5.0 out of 5 stars A most thorough account of her singing career
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 5, 2024
Verified Purchase
This is a unique record of Callas' singing and her performances over her lifetime in the greatest musical detail, which in itself is a terrific and as we know a multi year project. How Maria coped with her endless vocal challenges and overcame most of them so as not to let her increasingly devout fans down. No other Opera singer has ever had as much adulation, I believe from the indisputable fact that Maria went to endless lengths to understand the character roles she was playing. Her determination to put on the very best performance as humanly possible was clearly evident to anyone with a musical ear, whether they understood opera or not.
I very much recommend this book as a way of understanding more about the challenges facing any singer and all classical music. The investment made in doing so will reap a great reward to anyone who likes listening to a most sublime singing voice. Very many recordings are available online one way or the other, sadly not as many live ones as they do not exist.
Other reviewers have commented on the gossip that surrounded her but that is not at all important except her family and major male partners did her no favours whatever. No doubt it just added to her emotional qualities as singer bringing a depth that no other has managed to convey. Just ten minutes listening to her sing any of her favourite arias, Casta Diva etc demonstrates that quality in spades. Once heard never to be forgotten. A truly remarkable woman.
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Chilo Samai
5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptionnel !
Reviewed in France on April 3, 2024
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Pour qui aime la Callas il y a de quoi en apprendre.
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Raffaele Viggiano
5.0 out of 5 stars ottimo acquisto
Reviewed in Italy on November 30, 2023
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precisione e ottime condizioni del libro, consigliatissimo
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Roberto56
2.0 out of 5 stars Non indispensabile
Reviewed in Italy on January 22, 2024
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La solita, ennesima, non indispensabile libro sulla Callas. Niente di nuovo a parte la trita narrazione della vita amorosa, rapporto con la madre etc. Per marcare il centenario non avevamo bisogno di un'opera così banale ma di un'edizione critica basata sull'ascolto di ogni nota che la Callas ha inciso. Così le si sarebbe reso un buon servizio. È solo un libro molto lungo. Nulla di nuovo.
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