The house where opera legend Maria Callas lived from 1940 until she left for the United States in 1945 is to become an opera school according to latest reports from Greece. The project has been a long term goal of the soprano Vasso Papantoniou and her husband, the writer Vassilis Vassilikos.

The crumbling neoclassical building on the corner of 61 Patission Street and Scaramanga Street in central Athens has been neglected for years, but funds have now been secured for the renovations necessary to convert it into the Maria Callas Opera Academy. At a gala concert yesterday, Myron Michailidis Artistic Director of the Greek National Opera said that the organization would support the plans.

The 18-year-old Maria Callas (christened Anna Maria Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou) was already living in the apartment with her mother when she made her professional debut in February 1941, as Beatrice in Suppé’s operetta Boccaccio. In August 1942 she sang her first Tosca followed by the role of Marta in Eugen d’Albert’s Tiefland at the Olympia Theatre. During August and September 1944, Callas performed Leonore in Greek in a production of Fidelio at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus but after the liberation of Greece she returned to America...