A new museum honoring legendary soprano Maria Callas will open in Athens next year to mark the centenary of her birth, the city announced on Wednesday.
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This museum, which is scheduled to open in the summer of 2023, will present “valuable historical archives, rare live recordings, a unique collection of records and personal items“by Maria Callas, specifies in a press release the town hall of Athens. The collection includes a school album of the diva, autographed books and scores, opera toilets and photographs.
Dozens of Greek institutions and private collectors, including late artists Alekos Fassianos, Dimitris Mytaras and Panagiotis Tetsis, contributed to the new museum, the city said. Some of the items have been donated by La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and the Arena di Verona, where Maria Callas made her Italian debut in 1947.
Born in New York to Greek immigrant parents in 1923, Sophia Cecilia Anna Maria Kalogeropoulou lived in Athens from 1937 to 1945 after her parents separated. She took singing lessons at the National Conservatory and then made her professional debut at the Royal Athens Opera in 1941.
After a prestigious international career spanning more than three decades and a romance with the Greek magnate Aristotle Onassis, the singer died in Paris in 1977. Her ashes were scattered in the Aegean Sea two years later. A previous museum dedicated to La Callas, offering a less rich collection, had been open to the public in Athens from 2002 to 2008.