On this day, July 5, 1965, Maria Callas gave her last theatrical performance.

The ultimate opera diva performed Tosca to a packed Covent Garden, produced by Franco Zeffirelli, and was adored.

In the next 8 years, Callas “renounced” singing, starred as Medea in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film of the same name and taught operatic art at the Juilliard School.

In 1973 she returned as a solo act co-starring with her longtime collaborator Giuseppe Di Stefano on a controversially successful world tour that ended a year later.

Since then she has not sung again, partly because of a series of problems with her voice.

After the death of Aristotle Onassis in 1975 – and the mourning in which she was immersed – she also limited her worldly appearances, living isolated in her apartment in Paris.

The leading Greek speaker of the 20th century died on September 16, 1977, from a myocardial infarction, at the age of 53.

She was cremated and her ashes scattered in the Aegean Sea.