Angelina Jolie as María Callas
How does one live with one’s own ghost? Pablo Larrain takes us through the final seven of the darker years of María’s life. Lonely, isolated yet yearning for the stage, temperamental and erratic, she turned out to be her own worst enemy. As her frustration clashes with her idealism and perfectionism, she finds it excruciatingly hard to deal with the work required to get her voice back, despite frequent morning sessions with conductor Jeffrey Tate.
In ‘María’, Callas, still young in her mid-40s, is living in Paris, fragile and beholden to her addiction to ‘Mandrax’ tranquilizers and her desperate desire to regain her lost voice. In this alienated almost dream world, she hallucinates meeting an imaginary film maker ‘Mandrax’ to whom she opens her heart and re-lives her life.
“At my stage of the game, anything to survive”. Here is a woman of extraordinary talent, who, since her extremely unhappy childhood with an overbearing mother, was never able to trust anyone, leading to an inability to forge long-term friendships or relationships. As a child, Callas was fat and severely myopic with thick spectacles, not blessed with her older sister Yakinthi’s good looks. Nevertheless, from the age of only 5, her mother, who never worked, obliged the sisters to sing, seeing them as convenient cash cows, in particular María, who soon revealed her extraordinary ability: -
“I will never forgive her for taking my childhood away… I was singing to make money.”

Angelina Jolie as María Callas & Haluk Bilginer as Aristotle Onassis
Born Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos in New York City of Greek heritage, she died astonishingly young at only 53 years of age having achieved such unbelievable heights of fame with her dramatic talents, that she was known as La Divina (The Divine One).
When the girls were still young, after her divorce, Callas’ mother returned to Athens with her daughters. There, in WW2, the sisters and especially María earned the money needed to keep the family, by entertaining Italian and German soldiers during the occupation of Greece. As a young 13-year-old she started her Bel Canto lessons in Athens and was fanatical in her enthusiasm to learn, the first to arrive at the conservatoire and the last to leave, though she always attributed the development of her talents to the singer Elvira de Hidalgo.

Kodi Smit-McPhee as Mandrax
By 1941 she was singing at the Athens Opera. In 1945, she returned to New York shortly after which she met conductor Tullio Serafin, who recognized her talents, became her mentor and cast her in ‘Norma’ and then as Elvira in Bellini’s ‘I Puritani’ which was her first great success.
She married Giovanni Battista Meneghini in 1949. He became her manager but it was not to last. Her fateful relationship with Aristotle Onassis let her to divorce Meneghini. However, Onassis turned out to be a controlling despot. He did not want her to sing and the relationship ended up being profoundly toxic for her, although she claims, (also in the film) that she loved him to the end. This is the stuff of tragedies.

Callas' apartment in Paris with the piano
Despite trying to patch things up with her mother, it did not work out as her mother, traumatically, continued to expect María to be her cash cow, leading María to cutting her out of her life altogether.
Also she was haunted by memories of her early days devoid of affection that would bite into her sense of self- worth and self-esteem, despite her formidable talents. With a voice described as “a tempestuous extravagant cascade of sounds… full of drama and emotion”, she often, inevitably, had to cope with the envy of fellow singers. You do not have to love opera to respond to that sound.

Sadly, the fear of being fat led her to go on stringent diets throughout her life that brought out her beauty and elegance, but sadly, also triggered a strain on her vocal cords, playing a part in her losing her voice so young. Despite insisting she hated listening to her own records; she had a vast collection of her own recordings that she listened to, in private. Immensely versatile, in her earlier career, she sang the deeply powerful works from Strauss and many other weighty dramatic roles, while later, turning effortlessly to the lighter Italian coloratura operas, being known for Verdi, Puccini. Bellini and Donizetti.
“Her chromatic runs, particularly downwards, were beautifully smooth and staccatos almost unfailingly accurate” (Walter Legge)

Pablo Larraín
But the magic, once lost, like the petals of a rose, could never be regained. The ultimate dramatic singer lived the melodrama in her own life and died as in a Greek tragedy when she could have been at the height of her powers.
In María Callas lies to her doctor, De Fontainebleau about her tablets, he warns her not to sing due to her health, but even if it hurts and harms her, she cannot resist trying. Her anger and frustration are expressed by constantly getting her faithful butler and maid to repeatedly strain to move her grand piano from room to room, in the vain hope it will help her feel free. They are her only companions and, in the end, her only friends. She pretends to want anonymity but yearns for the glory she has lost. She is living with her own ghost. Sending out Ferruccio and Bruna for supplies she throws open her apartment windows to the world in a desperate and tragic climax, as she sings her heart out, quite literally, against her doctor’s orders before collapsing and dying.

Alba Rohrwacher as Bruna & Pierfrancesco Favino as Ferruccio with Jolie
Angeline Jolie’s performance is the best I have ever seen from her; she embodies the internal conflicts and demons that tormented Callas, with conviction and empathy. In about 95% of the performances, Jolie lip- synched to original Callas’ recordings, but, having had seven strenuous months of opera singing lessons, to full effect, she sang the dramatic final act herself. A truly stellar performance.
Angelina Jolie as Callas sings her last song
Larraín concentrated on the seven years before Callas’ death in 1977. She is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise where all that remains is a small innocuous plaque donated by her fans. This is the third film of a trilogy by Pablo Larraín that focuses on famous women who had given their all too soon and too fast to a world who took it, but gave nothing back,
María (2024) is available on MUBI and Netflix
María (2024) directed by Pablo Larraín