This book is the story of a woman and the story of a voice, the sublime moments, the depths of anguish. But it is also the story of a woman and a voice selfishly enslaved by us men from the start, by all of us, opera directors and members of her public. And so it is the story of a woman, a voice, and a group of men around her, pestering, snapping, wearying, and in the end covering their faces at the kill. Why Callas? Because she recreated opera. Because she revived an art of singing which had been forgotten or neglected for years. And because she was the first to realize that opera is theater too. Because beyond Callas as a vocal phenomenon, beyond her musical sense, her timbre, and the colors of her voice, there lay a tragic actress who, like Wieland Wagner just a few years before, set opera on a new road, who showed that there was something else. After Callas, opera will never be the same again. - Introduction.