On December 2, 1923 Maria Callas was born in Manhattan. She was destined to become one of the world’s greatest opera singers, yet her lonely demise and personal tragedy often overshadowed her singing career. Over one hundred years later, Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie portrays the Greek soprano during her final days in the biopic Maria, saying she has found a deep connection with the Greek diva.
“There’s a loneliness that we both share,” Jolie told the Associated Press during a recent interview. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think people can be alone and lonely sometimes, and that can be part of who they are.”
As one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Jolie has had to balance reports concerning her private life, such as her painful divorce from Brad Pitt, and the usual questions posed to someone of her fame, just as Maria Callas, also known as “La Divina,” did during her stardom. The Greek soprano died alone and with her divine singing voice gone at her Paris apartment in 1977 at the age of 53. This is a key reason why, according to the Associated Press, Jolie is so suited for the part of Callas.
“I know she was a public person because she loved her work. And I’m a public person because I love my work, not because I like being public. I think some people are more comfortable with a public life and I’ve never been fully comfortable with it,” Jolie told the Associated Press.
How singing in Callas’ biopic made Jolie appreciate opera
Jolie said she has never sung before, not even karaoke. However, the experience of the film has left her with a newfound appreciation of opera and its healing properties.
“I wonder if it’s something that you lean into as you get older,” Angelina Jolie said. “Maybe your depth of pain is bigger, your depth of loss is bigger and that sound in opera meets that, the enormity of it.”
Finding the breath of Maria Callas was enough to bring things out of Jolie that she didn’t even know existed.
“All of us, we really don’t realize where things land in our body over a lifetime of different experiences and where we hold it to protect ourselves,” the Hollywood star said in speaking with the Associated Press. “We hold it in our stomachs. We hold it in our chests. We breathe from a different place when we’re nervous or we’re sad.”
“The first few weeks were the hardest because my body had to open and I had to breathe again,” she adds. “And that was a discovery of how much I wasn’t.”
Maria to be released in Greece on December 5th
Pablo Larrain‘s Maria will be released in theaters across Greece on Thursday, December 5th. It was released in selected theaters in the United States on November 27th and will start streaming on Netflix on December 11th.
Filming got underway in Budapest in 2023, with other filming locations including Paris, Milan, where scenes were filmed at the La Scala opera house, and Greece. The film had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in August 2024.
The Maria Callas Museum in downtown Athens, dedicated to the life and career of the great opera diva, celebrated 101 years since the Greek soprano’s birth with a series of events honoring Maria Callas, including deejays playing rare versions of some of the soprano’s most famous arias.
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