Pablo Larraín is rounding out his trilogy of iconic 20th century women, from Princess Diana (“Spencer”) to Jackie Kennedy (“Jackie”), and now Maria Callas with “Maria.” However, that was not without some trepidation from his lead actress. The upcoming biopic stars Angelina Jolie as the ill-fated opera singer, who also shared a lover with Kennedy in shipping titan Aristotle Onassis, portrayed by Haluk Bilginer in “Maria.
” Onassis famously left Callas to marry Kennedy. Callas was a world-famous soprano singer and infamously had a feud with Renata Tebaldi. The Greek-American singer suffered from near-sightedness throughout her life and was referred to as La Divina or “The Divine One.
” She died at age 53 in 1977. “Maria” will debut at Venice 2024 after being announced in 2022. Jolie spent six months training to portray Callas, including learning how to sing and working with Oscar winner John Warhurst for her vocal portrayal of the opera star.
Director Larraín told Vanity Fair that it was all about balancing Jolie’s voice with recordings of Callas. “How can you make a movie about Maria Callas without using her voice? You can’t,” Larraín said. “[But] you can’t make a movie like this with an actress that is not actually singing it.
” He added of Jolie, “This is the real thing — it was very scary for her, but she did it.” The auteur admitted that Jolie’s preparation to play Callas was “very long, very particular, very difficult.”.