Jewellery worn by the legendary late opera star Maria Callas during her glory years will go under the auctioneer's hammer in the Swiss city of Geneva on Wednesday, stirring up emotions more than 27 years after she died.
The dazzling array of diamond and ruby earrings, necklaces, emeralds and a ring with an 11.7 carat diamond could fetch up to 1.2 million Swiss francs (790,000 euros, one million dollars), the auction house Sotheby's estimated.
"It's very rare to have the jewels of someone who is so mythical on sale, it really is the highlight of this autumn's auctions," said spokesman Frederic Leyat.
Callas received the 11 jewels as gifts from her first husband, Italian industrialist and opera lover Giovanni Battista Meneghini, during the 1950s.
It is the first time that they have been put on sale.
The collection was inherited by an anonymous member of the soprano's inner circle after she died in 1977, amid squabbling over her multi-million dollar estate and will involving family and friends.
Sotheby's has been at pains to maintain the traditional anonymity of the seller, but the feuding that soured the fringes of the late star's glamorous and tragic life shows little sign of abating more than a quarter of century later.
Newspapers have variously reported the seller to be the heirs of a Greek pianist friend of Callas, or a nurse who received an inheritance from Meneghini.
Franco Zeffirelli, the film director and opera producer, and a close friend of Callas, recently denounced the sale for "shamefully exploiting Marias legacy".
Zeffirelli, whose film "Callas Forever" has just been released, said in the British newspaper The Sunday Times: "I have received an invitation but I have no intention of going. I don't want to smell the jackals involved in this."
The auctioneers said there was strong interest from potential bidders, but the collection shows every sign of being scattered to the four corners of the world.
A ruby and diamond suite including matching necklace, earrings, and bracelet is being sold as separate lots. "The reason for making it three indvidual lots was that Maria was loved by so many people and to assume that they could all be at the level to afford the suite was a bit presumptuous," said Sotheby's Geneva director Brett O'Connor.
"So we wanted everybody to have a chance to have a piece of someone who was so liked," he added.
The daughter of Greek immigrants to New York, Callas -- Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulos by her real name -- was born in 1923.
But her surroundings rarely proved to be stable even from childhood, and she returned to Greece at the age of 14 after her parents separated.
Eight years after her operatic debut in 1941, the star married the Italian industrialist, who was much older than her.
Meneghini managed her career, guiding the soprano through performances in Milan, New York, Chicago and London that drew acclaim and admiration from opera buffs.
Callas later fell in love with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Their stormy and high-profile relationship led to the end of her marriage in 1959 and appeared to upset her performances on stage.
Onassis ultimately shunned her devotion, marrying Jacqueline Kennedy nine years later.
Callas's last public performance was in Japan in November 1974. She died died heartbroken in her Paris apartment in 1977 at the age of 53.
During Wednesday evening's auctions, part of the traditional autumn jewellry sales in Geneva, a 10.2 carat, pear-shaped "fancy vivid blue" diamond from another collection will also go under the hammer.
O'Connor estimated that it would fetch seven to eight million Swiss Francs.
