Tom Volf
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No. 15 MMXVII Book

Callas Confidential

Published in the fall of 2017, to mark forty years since the death of Maria Callas, Callas Confidential is the second book that Tom Volf devotes to the diva: a work in its own right, complementary to Maria by Callas published...

No. 15 — MMXVII Callas Confidential (2017)
01 / The work
Affiche officielle

Published in the fall of 2017, on the occasion of the forty years since the death of Maria Callas, Callas Confidential is the second book that Tom Volf devotes to the diva: a work in its own right, complementary to Maria by Callas published six months earlier by Assouline. Its particularity: the reproduction of Maria Callas' personal photographic albums, accompanied by numerous unpublished private photographs, as well as all of her transcribed interviews with the written press - from 1949 to 1977 - including numerous interviews which had never been published.

Two hundred and forty pages in which the singer tells her story for herself: unpublished photographs from her private albums, fragments of correspondence and notebooks, rediscovered interviews in which she expresses herself unvarnished about her life, her art, her scandals.

Material collected during three years of investigation carried out around the world, in the archives of her still-living relatives - Ferruccio Mezzadri and Bruna Lupoli, her butler and her maid, testify here for the first time.

A fascinating and extremely moving dive into the intimacy of the voice of the century.
Librairie Mollat
02 / Iconography

In pictures

03 / At the heart of the book

At heart of the book

The book's approach breaks with traditional biography: no linear narrative imposed by a third party, but a montage of raw documents that let the diva speak.

“There are two related but distinct things: Maria and Callas”, she declared. Tom Volf builds the book around this distinction — and deliberately chooses to privilege Maria over Callas, the woman over the public figure.

The selection covers the entire journey, from modest childhood in New York to the last years in Paris, including the stage triumphs of the 1950s, the filming of the Medea of Pasolini in Türkiye in 1969, the relationship with Onassis, the friendship with Pier Paolo Pasolini and Luchino Visconti.

The book is part of a larger device – the film Maria by Callas released two months later, the exhibition at the Seine Musicale - which redefined the public memory of the singer for France.

Credits

Buy : Editions de La Martinière · FNAC · Librairie Gallimard

Intimacy rediscovered

Released October 12, 2017 for the 40e anniversary of the death of Maria Callas, the work gives voice for the first time to Ferruccio and Bruna, her butler and her maid — direct witnesses of the singer's Parisian years.

Added to their stories are five previously unpublished letters, extracts from diaries, photographs from Callas' private albums, and reproductions of press clippings that she herself collected.

“A book for diva fetishists — for those who want to catch the eye of the woman behind the icon. »

Forum Opéra · October 2017

Also available at Librairie Mollat (Bordeaux) and to the Librairie Gallimard (Paris).

Press publications

Le Figaro & You

“The Secret Callas” — cover report on Tom Volf’s work around Maria Callas, on the occasion of the publication of Callas Confidential.

Le Figaro — La Callas secrète