Maria Callas began her serious musical training in Athens, where she was tutored by Maria Trivella, who saw her potential as a dramatic soprano. She later studied with Spanish coloratura soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who helped Callas secure secondary roles at the Greek National Opera. These roles would supply Callas with a small salary that she used to help provide for her family during World War II. She made her leading role debut as Tosca in 1942, followed by appearances as Marta in Eugen d’Albert’s Tiefland   at the Olympia Theatre, bringing her major critical acclaim and launching her career. 

After World War II, Greece was liberated from the Axis powers and Callas returned to New York, where she was reunited with her father and auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera. The Met offered her the leading roles in Madame Butterfly   and Fidelio,   but she was convinced that she wasn’t suited for either and declined. (Some sources say that Callas was unhappy with the contract, not the roles.) She returned to Europe to star in La Gioconda   at the Arena di Verona to great acclaim. While in Verona, she also met Giovanni Battista Meneghini, a wealthy industrialist, whom she married in 1949.  

The turning point of her career came that same year. Having established herself as a dramatic soprano, Callas was appearing as Brünnhilde in Die Walküre   in Venice. When another soprano fell ill, she was asked to replace her—on six days’ notice—in the lyric coloratura role of Elvira in I Puritani.   Her completely unexpected triumph changed the course of her career as she began to focus largely on bel canto   roles. She also dropped nearly 80 pounds, transforming herself from a woman who was in her own words “heavy and uncomfortable to move around” into a chic, strikingly beautiful figure on the stage. She experienced a meteoric rise to fame, starring at major opera houses in iconic roles such as Norma, Tosca, Violetta and Lucia. However, it was still an unhappy time for her. Her letters showed that her husband was robbing her of the majority of her money. On top of this, her mother constantly berated her for not sending money and her father even lied about dying to get money from her. Her relationship with her parents was well documented in the media. Her mother even wrote a book titled My Daughter Maria Callas.   In 1950, Callas ceased all communication with her mother.  

In 1957, Callas met shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. They started a very public affair that continued well past her divorce from Meneghini in 1959. Around this time, she had grown disillusioned with the opera world. Onassis offered her a way out, though their affair would be a source of trauma. Onassis was prone to violence and her friends reported that he would even drug her. During the 1960s, her voice started to fail, at an alarmingly early age for an opera singer. (Most singers are just reaching their vocal prime in their forties.)  

Her relationship with Onassis ended in 1969 when he left her to be with the widowed Jacqueline Kennedy. Callas made rare public appearances for interviews in the 1970s but the majority of her final years were spent in isolation in Paris. She died of a heart attack on September 20, 1977, at the age of 53. 

When describing her life, her friend John Ardoin, a music critic, said “No, it's a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it's a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand. Because she couldn't explain what she did—it was all done by instinct; it was something, incredibly, embedded deep within her.” Maria Callas left behind a bar that opera singers have strived to reach since her passing and showed that an entire industry can be shaken by one person. But it’s important to remember that she was also a woman, one who went through tremendous pain in her life and one whose story is worth telling and remembering.