Vanna Vinci's Graphic Novel Explores Maria Callas's Life and Myth

Vanna Vinci, a cartoonist born in Cagliari in 1964, has created a graphic novel titled "Io sono Maria Callas," published by Feltrinelli Comics in Milan in 2018. The book delves into the life of legendary soprano Maria Callas (born Anna Maria Kalogeropoulos), who died in Paris on September 16, 1977, at age 54. Vinci structures the narrative like a Greek tragedy, with prologue, parodos, stasima, and episodes, highlighting emblematic moments: Callas's awkward overweight youth oppressed by her mother, her international success, relationships with men such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, and Aristotle Onassis, the disastrous 1958 Norma performance at the Rome Opera where she lost her voice and abandoned the show, and her final years in solitude in her Paris apartment. The work features a chorus of characters—friends, lovers, detractors, colleagues, and even Giuseppe Verdi, Euripides, a lady from Verona, and singing birds—who add pieces to the Callas mystery. Vinci's drawings are praised for their beauty and anatomical attention to Callas's physical transformations, from plump and sloppy teenager to slender and sophisticated figure after drastic diets and intervention by famed stylist Biki. The graphic novel avoids easy pathos and presents a dignified portrait.