What merits does Angelina Jolie have to play Maria Callas in the cinema?

Embodying Maria Callas, as Angelina Jolie is now proposing, is not an easy task.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
22 October 2022 Saturday 04:49
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What merits does Angelina Jolie have to play Maria Callas in the cinema?

Embodying Maria Callas, as Angelina Jolie is now proposing, is not an easy task. That of the diva was a life of contrasts, dazzling as well as tortuous, endured with large doses of irony and loneliness. The great adoration professed by the public during her decades as queen of hearts of the opera ran parallel to the contempt of her own mother, who only had eyes for her sister; to the cruel demands of her critics, who always expected the best from her, and to the indifference of Aristotle Onassis, who definitively humiliated her by marrying Jackie Kennedy. What followed was a maturity withdrawn from the stage and abandoned to the solitude of her flat in Paris...

And although Jolie, the star now called to shine on her behalf on the big screen, under the orders of Pablo Larraín, is another light in the firmament with a very peculiar personality and whose life is not without controversy either, she will not have it easy to get into the skin of the singer/actress who came into the world to change the conception of lyrical interpretation.

Just ask Monica Bellucci, who this summer made an appearance at the Peralada Festival with her project on the declamation of Maria Callas's letters. And it had zero success. Or the Serbian artist Marina Abramovic, who this season will show her 7 deaths of Maria Callas at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. Although this is already another concept and arouses much more expectation among lovers of museum culture, as well as among the operatic public.

Analyzing the virtues that Angelina Jolie brings together, one might think that she has it more difficult than Kristen Stewart playing Lady Diana Spencer at her last Christmas parties with the British royal family. But the halo of unreality with which Pablo Larrín, nominated for an Oscar and all that, plays in his favor, presents these iconic women who have left their indelible mark on the history of humanity.

And Jolie, the heroine of Tomb Rider, the most interesting killer in Mr. and Mrs. Smith -where she met Brad Pitt- or Salt's counter-spy who refused to be a Bond girl -"Bond girl? Excuse me, I'm Bond" , he blurted out to those who proposed it- has shown signs of needing to exploit his interpretive abilities in this darker side of real human emotions.

For her, this role may mean the first recognition as an actress, who has not managed to stand out enough with any of her films. She has the opportunity to overcome the cliché of being pretty and sexy, without having to become a Monster like Charlize Theron did to win an Oscar.

Entitled Maria, the film will tell the "tumultuous, beautiful and tragic story of the life of the world's greatest opera singer, revived and reimagined during her final days in 1970s Paris," according to the production company's tagline. guarantee of success for Jolie, in any case, is the screenwriter: Steven Knight, who is also the author of Spencer, Peaky Blinders or Eastern Promises.

In an interview, the Greek soprano born in Manhattan - although vocally trained since she was 13 years old in her country of origin - admitted that there were two people in her. There was Maria and there was Callas. A duality that she had to confront all her life. She, in fact, sacrificing her private life and the possibility of living a love. She was a world celebrity, the best soprano of the 20th century, but the extreme sensitivity that made her famous and that was the reason that at first she was not appreciated by the most stale public, who did not understand that in her case the expressive capacity of her voice fully justified some passages of vocal ugliness, it was also his cross from doors to inside.

Maria Callas was a romantic, something not entirely obvious in what has so far distilled the character of Angelina Jolie, always subtle, sharp, provocative. But this vital duality that the singer lamented affects whoever she wants to belong to the celluloid star system. Jolie hasn't wanted to keep those two lives completely separate. She has introduced her children on the red carpet of the festivals, she has been seen with them, offering some of the most sought after images of the pink press. Not surprisingly, the resemblance of the three offspring born from her union with the heartthrob Pitt arouses curiosity, as well as the development of her other three adopted children.

In this sense, the actress would still be in control of the story of her life, something that escaped Callas at many points in her career. It must be taken into account that the soprano who sang Norma like no one had done before -with the aria "Casta diva" that made her so famous and unique- dealt with her severe myopia that left her almost blind. And that the many scandals in her personal and professional life were breathlessly exposed by the press, as were her charming encounters with Grace Kelly, who adored her and invited her to spend days on the Monegasque Riviera.

In addition, he settled in Italy to develop his career, a country that devours opera stars, who are elevated with the same ease that they are dropped with a crash when the vocal cords are no longer so fit, or when, as happened in a occasion in Rome, the singer is affected by a simple cold. In fact, she experienced an intense rivalry with the Italian opera singer Renata Tebaldi... If all this is not a reason to satisfy Angelina Jolie's curiosity and courage, nothing can do it.

“I take responsibility very seriously, for the trajectory and legacy of María. I will give everything I can to rise to the challenge. Pablo Larraín is a director I have admired for a long time. Having the opportunity to tell more of Maria's story with him, and with a script by Steven Knight, is a dream," said the actress.

Kristen Stewart as Spencer and Natalie Portman as Princess Diana both earned best actress nominations for their respective leading roles. The Chilean director has that trick when it comes to digging higher and higher in the Hollywood firmament to design the cast of his films. And Jolie needs something really big that makes her forget her battle in court over Pitt's alcoholic and violent behavior in the past, as she describes herself.

Another question is whether Larrín is sufficiently knowledgeable about the world of opera and its divas. It is not an easy subject to take to the cinema. The script would focus on his case in the last stage of Callas, off stage, but the musical temptation will be great. Maria is produced by Juan de Dios Larraín for Fabula Pictures, Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment Pictures, a Fremantle Company and Jonas Dornbach for Komlizen Film.