With the discharge of Pablo Larraín’s new biopic Maria, starring Angelina Jolie, the world is as soon as once more drawn into the lifetime of Greek-American opera legend Maria Callas, whose artistry, ambition and isolation have been inseparable from her delusion. The movie premiered on the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2024 and has been streaming on Lionsgate Play in India since May 9, 2025.
A childhood marked by battle
Maria Anna Cecilia Kalogeropoulos was born in New York in 1923 to Greek immigrant dad and mom. Her childhood was marred by household discords and poverty. When her dad and mom separated, her mom took Maria and her sister again to Athens, simply earlier than World War II. Life in wartime Greece was bleak, however inside that panorama, a outstanding voice got here into being.
Maria skilled at Athens Conservatoire below soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who noticed not solely the potential however the ferocity in her voice. She practised obsessively, remoted from pals, fuelled by her mom’s ambition and her personal rising starvation for greatness. She would later say her youth was stolen from her by music.
A meteoric rise
Her skilled debut got here within the Nineteen Forties in Athens, but it surely was in post-war Italy that her legend began to crystallise. By the age of 25, Maria had conquered the main Italian levels, singing with an depth that audiences had not seen in a long time. At Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, she redefined operatic performing.
Maria introduced Bel Canto opera — lengthy thought of ornamental and outdated — again into cultural prominence. In works by Bellini, Donizetti and early Verdi, she discovered emotional depth. Her Norma was torn between motherhood and priestly responsibility. Her Lucia descended into insanity with devastating realism. These weren’t simply performances. They have been revelations.
Her voice was uncommon: expansive in vary, unstable in color, able to each lyrical delicacy and volcanic pressure. Critics generally referred to as it uneven. But even those that questioned her method admitted they might not look away.
Glamour and grit
She sang and conquered
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By the Nineteen Fifties, Maria had change into a world movie star. Her drastic weight reduction remodeled her bodily and visually aligned her with the ‘fashion elite’. Designers resembling Dior and Biki dressed her, photographers pursued her, and tabloids devoured each element of her life.
But the transformation was not with out price. Many believed her voice turned fragile after the bodily change. Others pointed to the sheer emotional toll her performances exacted. Either means, her profession started to gradual by the early Sixties.
Offstage, her relationship with the Greek delivery magnate, Aristotle Onassis, made headlines. When he left her for Jacqueline Kennedy, Maria was devastated. Those who knew Maria, stated she by no means recovered emotionally, although she not often spoke about it in public.
Jolie’s Maria
In her final years, Maria withdrew from limelight, dwelling in solitude in her Paris condo. Friends famous her rising frailty (bodily and emotional). She had change into depending on a explicit sedative that was prescribed for insomnia and nervousness throughout the Sixties and ’70s.
According to a number of biographers, Maria’s reliance on prescription treatment intensified publish Onassis’s marriage to Jacqueline. She reportedly battled bouts of melancholy, irregular heartbeat and fluctuating weight within the early 19’70s. Though these have been not often acknowledged in public, Maria too hid her ache behind darkish glasses, tailor-made fits, and thoroughly worded silences.
It is that this fragile, human aspect that director Pablo Larraín explores in Maria, his introspective biopic starring Angelina Jolie. Set totally within the final years of the singer’s ife, the movie avoids the grandeur of her profession, and as a substitute, lingers on the quiet rituals of reminiscence: letters, outdated movies, echoes of applause. Angelina’s portrayal, knowledgeable by months of archival analysis, is inward and dignified. She performs Maria, not as a legend, however as a girl who as soon as commanded the stage, however now, wrestles with silence.
What emerges will not be a portrait of a diva, however of a girl confronting the ghosts of her former self.
A legacy etched in sound
Maria died in 1977, on the age of 53. Her ashes have been scattered within the Aegean Sea, not removed from the land that had formed her identification. Even in loss of life, as in life, she was elusive — no autobiography, no farewell interviews, solely an echo of her voice. In 2023, Athens inaugurated the Maria Callas Museum, marking her centenary with a assortment of non-public objects, costumes, recordings and letters. The museum displays not solely her creative legacy however her enduring relevance to opera, theatre and efficiency.
Her recordings stay broadly studied and offered. Even immediately,no soprano can sing Tosca, Norma or La Traviata with out dealing with comparability to Maria.But her affect will not be measured solely in sound. She modified the expectations of what an opera singer might be: not merely a singer, however an actor, a thinker and human being on stage.
The flame that endured
Angelia Jolie in a nonetheless from the biopic
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Special Arrangement
Maria was by no means content material to be admired from a distance. She demanded engagement. Her artistry was messy, uncooked, generally painful. She reached into roles and ripped them open. Her voice cracked. She missed notes. But she was by no means boring. She made the viewers really feel.
In an period of perfection, hers is a voice that reminds us of one thing extra human. She didn’t conceal her ache, however remodeled it. In doing so, she modified the face of opera.
Perhaps that is why Maria Callas nonetheless issues. Not as a result of she was flawless, however as a result of she was fearless.
Published – May 21, 2025 08:21 pm IST
