Rehearsals absolutely must sing in full voice for your own sake, for your colleagues sake and the main thing is to test your own possibilities. #MariaCallas

[On Trills] A trill is a necessity this is the equipment that goes with our instrument. In these operas that we preform abbellimenti must be dealt with physically and technically. One must have these to serve the music and be an honest musician. #MariaCallas

The full dress rehearsal, so there's no stopping unless it's something terribly, just like a performance with the critics, so you sing throughout with no interruption as it was a performance. #MariaCallas

You learn the role. You will roughly learn it. As I say, because these goes in stages, you cannot expect to learn it immediately. You have to give it time to be learned to be matured. #MariaCallas

You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there. #MariaCallas

If the last act is not superior to all the rest, well, you might as well not sing it. #MariaCallas

What I learned from Sarafine was that you must serve music, because music is so enormous and can envelop you into such a state of perpetual anxiety and torture, but it is our first and main duty. #MariaCallas

In other words, sing exactly as it's written, nothing more, nothing less, which is the phrase that I call straight jacketing, faster infinitely strictly how the composer wrote it. #MariaCallas

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house. #MariaCallas

On stage, I am in the dark. #MariaCallas

If you take the trouble to really listen with your soul and with your ears - and I say soul and ears because the mind must work, but not too much also - you will find every gesture there. And it is all true, you know. #MariaCallas