In 2013, decades after the legendary prima donna left the scene forever, filmmaker Tom Volf fell in love with Maria Callas. Since then, he has traveled the globe to uncover lost archives on Callas’s life and work, meeting and interviewing many of the renowned soprano’s closest friends and colleagues, who opened their collections to him, unveiling a trove of previously unknown photos, many of which originally came from Maria’s own albums. 

Composed with the support of many of Maria’s loved ones, including Nadia Stancioff, her longtime best friend, and Georges Prêtre, her favorite conductor, who for the first time in forty years agreed to collaborate on a book about her, Maria by Callas is the definitive, unique product of countless hours of research, offering a new perspective—a personal album as Maria herself would have presented, invoking the diva’s own voice. This material is now at the center of the project Maria by Callas: In Her Own Words, including a film, an exhibition, and a collection of original live recordings.