About the author:

Tom Volf is a director and photographer whose work ranges from theater and fashion to corporate communications. At Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Volf was in charge of digital and audiovisual communication, producing programs for broadcast and directing numerous interviews with international artists, including Placido Domingo, David Cronenberg, and Sting. He has produced programs for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, including its fiftieth anniversary film, and he has directed image and advertising for several fashion campaigns.

Nadia Stancioff first met Maria Callas in 1969 as a publicist for the Pier Paolo Pasolini film Medea, and she remained Callas’s close friend during the diva’s final years. Stancioff previously wrote Maria Callas Remembered: An Intimate Portrait of the Private Callas (1987).

Georges Prêtre, who passed away in January 2017, was an internationally acclaimed opera and orchestra conductor. Among his many accomplishments, he conducted the premiere of Francis Poulenc’s opera La voix humaine at the Opéra-Comique in 1959. Throughout his long and celebrated career, Prêtre was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, and Grand Officer of the French Légion d’Honneur.