The film begins with a newsreel of Callas’s funeral in Paris, and it is not immediately apparent that it is to be more than an anthology of pious platitudes, oral and visual, assembled and marketed in the emotional floodtide following her then-recent death. Zefirelli is stationed in the auditorium of La Scala, where he can look towards the stage which ‘still seems to reverberate with the sound of her voice’. Then we see Callas herself – but not herself, for this is her persona as gracious and glamorous purveyor of artistic truth (as in the assurance that people go to the theatre ‘for something better’, there being enough that is sordid and depressing in real life). Then the witnesses arrive, starting with Menotti, who recalls an association with fear and, in her voice, ‘something bitter’. This is more interesting, but instead of pursuing it the film moves on, as is the way with interviews and interview-based programmes. From Rescigno comes ‘a supremely dedicated performer’, from Caballe ‘Thank you, Maria, for coming to us,’ and from Zefirelli ‘She literally changed the face of opera.’
Yet in spite of the patchwork method and flaccid generalisations, the film does succeed in what were presumably its primary aims – to show the fascination of the woman and the artist, the interaction of the one with the other, and, in doing so, to move its audience with the strange mixture of glorious public achievement and deep personal unfulfilment. Stranger still, perhaps, is the stirring of so many conflicting reactions. In the midst of such insistent testimony, the film-footage of Callas ‘in action’ inevitably tests the claims. Does it truly support them? Is that filmed ‘Vissi d’arte’, for instance, really the work of a great operatic actress? Often it rather strengthens the view that with Callas, as with all great opera singers, most of the acting is done with the voice. And yet at the end we are left with her singing ‘Ah, non credea mirarti’ from La sonnambula, where the voice becomes frail and unsteady while the face is transfigured, infinitely touching. No: it’s not a film to be missed, and the bonus footage sheds interesting light on its making, especially from John Ardoin, clearly one of its prime movers.'