Angelina Jolie plays Maria Callas in Pablo Larrain’s “Maria.” (Photo: Pablo Larrain)
This past August 29th, the world premiere of the film took place at the Venice International Film Festival Maria. Directed by Pablo Larrain and featuring Angelina Jolie Starring Maria Callas, the film imagines the final days of the famous singer, who died of a heart attack at the age of 53, four years after retiring from the stage.
At the end of Thursday night’s screening, the film received an 8-10 minute standing ovation that moved its lead actress. Jolie had never sung in front of an audience before taking on the role: she took lessons for over seven months in order to be able to reproduce the physical effort required by opera singing. In the film, the sung excerpts heard are the result of an amalgamation of the voices of Callas and Jolie.
The actress admits that she didn’t know much about Maria Callas before taking part in this project, but now says she sees things in common with her, including a great vulnerability.
The film forms part of the director’s previous works, Jackie (on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) and Spencer (about Princess Diana), a sort of trilogy with the fate of famous women as its theme. The reviews available in the media so far almost all lean in the same direction, recognizing the mastery of the realization of Larrainbut admitting to having felt a certain emotional distance from the subject.
On Wednesday, Netflix announced that it had acquired the rights to the film, but has not yet revealed when it will be available for viewing on its platform.
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Passionate about the symphony orchestra and music mediation, Béatrice is trained in musical performance (viola and orchestral conducting) at the Conservatoire de musique de Québec, Université Laval and the École supérieure de musique et de théâtre de Hannover (Germany). She also holds a master’s degree in musicology from the Université de Montréal. She is regularly called upon as a musical advisor and assistant director for transmissions and recordings of concerts by the greatest ensembles in Montreal and at the Festival international de Lanaudière.
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