"I was head at St Mary's Catholic Primary in Norton and ... an executive headteacher of St Maria Goretti, Bentilee. It was a seriously underperforming school. I was executive headteacher of ...

Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Almost 50 years on from her death, however, the public perception of Maria Callas all too often skews in one direction: the tortured female star.

Maria ­Callas was only 45 when she grimly assessed her situation during an interview with the critic John Ardoin. She had played all her cards and lost every round, and ­although she would ...