There's a tragic inevitability with Angelina Jolie's Maria Callas

Angelina Jolie’s Maria Callas stares across Paris through oversized, ‘milk-bottle’ bottomed lenses that exaggerate her blackened pupils. The spectacles anchor us in the late 70s, at a time the soprano is suffering from anorexia, addiction and the loss of her voice – a formerly voluptuous sound that lit up opera houses and record players around the world.

Pablo Larraín’s film Maria – the latest instalment in his triptych of ‘glamorous women having nervous breakdowns’, following Jackie (Jackie Kennedy) and Spencer (Princess Diana) – hems in Callas’s final week, a drug-fuelled swirl of hallucination and humiliation. Central to this period are sessions with a pianist; a potential comeback is indicated, then swept aside, as Callas’s vocal decline becomes painfully apparent.

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Any biopic about a musician faces a challenge: should the score include new or original recordings? Do you opt for a fresh version, as in Mamma Mia!, and risk having to make do with Pierce Brosnan’s karaoke style singing, or have an actor lip sync, like Rami Malek did as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody? 

If so, do they lip sync to the musician they are portraying, or a recorded voice match? (Malek’s Mercury was a mixture of singer Marc Martel and the Queen vocalist.) Maria has the added complication of spotlighting an operatic soprano, a voice type that can take decades to master. Or in Angelina Jolie’s case – seven months.

Extracts from nine operas are featured in the film, including the iconic O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi, using recordings made during the 50s. Callas’s voice has been isolated and blended – in varying degrees – with a portion of Jolie’s newly learned vocals. 

Technically, it’s impressive, and the reproductions by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra are seamlessly woven into the original orchestral performance. On screen, Callas, having instructed her housekeeper Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) to record her rehearsal, endures a painful listen back on the portable tape player. 

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It is a pale imitation of her earlier sound; some voices just cannot be re-created. Such is the conclusion we reach watching Maria. With so many acclaimed sopranos to choose from, it seems strange to expect Jolie to sing. Artistic stunt doubles are often employed: while Dame Maggie Smith played the piano in some of the scenes featured in The Lady in the Van, it was professional pianist Clare Hammond who stood in as the young Miss Shepherd and her performances of Schubert, Chopin and George Fenton, with the Philharmonia and BBC Concert Orchestra, can be heard throughout the film. 

Visually, however, Maria is a sumptuous treat. Angelina Jolie’s wide-eyed conversations with a TV interviewer facilitate flashbacks about her one-time partner Aristotle Onassis, appearances on stage and conversations about the behaviour that gave her the nickname La Divina. 

But, as our heroine desperately stashes pills in pockets, the extent of her illness is revealed. Spoiler alert: there is no TV interviewer.

Distilling Callas’s life into a timeline of a few days adds dramatic tension – particularly when her biography is so well known. As with Last Days – the 2005 film, and 2022 opera, about Kurt Cobain’s final moments – a tragic inevitability threads its way through every scene. We don’t need the appearance of the pushy doctor who informs Callas her life is at risk unless she makes some changes; the end is nigh.

Callas’s legacy lives on in her many recordings, with all 74 roles that she sang released in the La Divina box set collection (Warner Classics). All her studio and live recordings have been remastered. What is striking is the sheer breadth and range of repertoire sung during her 30s; something that may well have contributed to her early vocal decline in her 40s. Even the brightest stars can burn out.

Maria is in cinemas now. Maria (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is out on PLG UK Classics.

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