Operatic therapy: How Angelina Jolie found her voice playing singer Maria Callas in biopic

SINGAPORE – For the biographical film Maria, American actress Angelina Jolie learnt to sing opera.

The training was gruelling, but there was a happy by-product: mental wellness.

At a virtual press conference in October 2024, the Hollywood star says: “To sing opera, you have to access and open up so many parts of your physical body and your sound. It was more effective than years of just talking and analysing. It is the rare art form where everything you’ve got in your body is released. It is the loudest you can be and the most emotional.”

In Maria, which opens in Singapore cinemas on Feb 20, the 49-year-old plays the celebrated Greek-American opera singer Maria Callas in the final years of her life. Callas died in 1977 at the age of 53.

For several months, Jolie – who last appeared on the big screen in superhero movie Eternals (2021) and action thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) – worked with vocal coaches.

“I encourage everybody to try singing opera. It’s about finding your voice, understanding your body, whatever’s happening within your own body, to get your voice back and then let it all out,” she says.

The point of the coaching was so Jolie’s posture and breathing would be in sync with the Callas recordings. Jolie also had to sing live during filming so Chilean director Pablo Larrain could determine how to blend her voice with that of Callas’ for the final recording.

The film is set in the 1970s in Paris, where Callas had lived after giving up public opera performances. Despite her failing health, she agrees to perform again – a decision that may have been made while she was under the influence of prescription sedatives.

As she is interviewed by journalist Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), there are flashbacks to a harsh, poverty-stricken childhood in wartime Greece, and her meeting and subsequent affair with shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), for whom she would leave her husband – only for the magnate to later marry Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of United States president John F. Kennedy.

At the height of her fame, Callas was the embodiment of the diva.

She was in the gossip columns frequently. Her fashion sense made the news, but so did her temper, which led to walkouts and cancellations. Tabloids would cover her tumultuous affair with Onassis in detail. Her unique voice divided opera fans into two camps – many found her style to be dramatic and exciting, but others felt it lacked refinement.

Friends and fellow musicians would note that the haughty performer who commanded the stage, whom they dubbed “La Callas”, differed greatly from the person they called “Maria”, a woman who had been betrayed, was emotionally vulnerable and frequently lonely.

Jolie says she came to grips with the role by first understanding Maria.

“Maria was a hard-working, disciplined person who started singing when she was a teen. She didn’t have a very loving mother. She was often very alone,” adds the mother of six children aged 16 to 23, who finalised her divorce from American actor Brad Pitt in January after an eight-year legal saga.

Ultimately, the La Callas everyone adored was Maria, showing only the side of herself that the public wanted to see.

“Maria is the music. Maria is La Callas. It’s just that sometimes, Maria didn’t have a lot of space or care. They loved La Callas and they weren’t always kind to Maria,” she says.

Seated next to Jolie was Larrain, a film-maker known for his biopics Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021).

The leads of both films – Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart – earned Best Actress Oscar nominations for playing the title roles of Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana respectively.

Jolie was nominated for Best Actress In A Motion Picture – Drama at the Golden Globes in January, but did not win. She was snubbed at the Academy Awards to be held on March 2.

Callas, whose orbit crossed Kennedy’s in that they were both linked to Onassis, had a tragic mystique not present in the women seen in his previous films, says Larrain, 48.

“She was an artist, someone who elevated her craft to a level that I don’t think anyone has ever reached in the opera world. She burned herself out by singing and eventually died because of it.

“There are so many documentaries and biographies about her, and yet you never really know her. There’s an element of mystery about her that is so captivating. There is something not being said in the film that the audience must complete for themselves. There is a lot of beauty there.”