Maria Callas is the ultimate opera icon. At the height of her powers, the American-born Greek soprano performed Puccini’s dramatic roles as convincingly as she tossed off bel canto ornamentation. Born in New York in 1923, Callas moved back to Greece in her teens and established a reputation as an obsessively dedicated music student who absorbed every sound she encountered. After performing Tosca in 1942 at the Greek National Opera—a role she reprised in the definitive recording with the tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano (1953)—she went to Italy as a rising star in heavy Verdian and Wagnerian roles. However, her success in an unexpected I puritani performance in 1949 catapulted her to fame as a bel canto soprano whose acting prowess infused the operas of Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini with new vivacity and dimension. Callas’ voice had a range of color that was by turns penetrating, peculiar, and even vehement on the world’s great stages; she could famously execute a diminuendo on the stratospherically high E-flat of the La sonnambula finale with ease and total control. Yet despite the grandeur of opera and Callas’ acute dramatic abilities, her musical choices were elegant and unostentatious. Through her inimitable sound, incisive musicality, and resurrection of bel canto repertoire, Callas became the unrivaled operatic embodiment of emotive power.