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Maria Callas, the world's greatest opera singer, lives the last days of her life in 1970s Paris, as she confronts her identity and life.. Angelina Jolie and director Pablo Larraín discuss how they are connected to the heartbreaking true story of the world-renowned opera singer Maria Callas.. Angelina Jolie, refusing to be dubbed and wishing to perform her own singing, took 7 months of opera lessons to prepare for her role. For the scenes set during Callas' heyday, an estimated 90 to 95 percent of Callas' original recordings were used, with Jolie lip-synching along to these songs. However, Jolie’s singing comes to the fore during the film’s final act.. When Angelina Jolie is lip-syncing to María Callas’ original recordings throughout the film, her mouth movements are out of sync with the audio.. Maria Callas: Book me a table at a café where the waiters know who I am. I’m in the mood for adulation.. Referenced in Close-Up: Why do We Need the Venice Film Festival? (2024). Otello Act 4: ‘Ave Maria’ (Desdemona)Performed by Maria Callas, Orchestra de la Société des Concerts du ConservatoireConductor: Nicola RescignoWritten by Giuseppe Verdi, Arrigo BoitoA Warner Classics Release, (p) 1964 Parlophone Records LimitedRemastered 2014 Parlophone Records LimitedCourtesy of Warner Music Group Germany Holding GmbH, and Warner Music Group Company. I have to say director Pablo Larrain’s 2024 entry into his iconic 20th-century women trilogy was a disappointment. It starts with the casting as Angelina Jolie may be too iconic herself to portray supreme diva Maria Callas, the least remembered of the trio, the other two being "Jackie" (2016) and Diana in "Spencer" (2021). Jolie conveys the necessary self-possession to carry off the regal image of the world’s greatest opera singer, but physically she looks too skeletal to emulate convincingly the more robust figure Callas struck. Written by Steven Knight, the lugubrious, longish film covers the last week of Callas’s life in 1977 Paris, a fictionalized account with inevitable flashbacks that cumulatively plays out like a ghost story. All the production elements like the burnished cinematography and set details are impressively handled, but Larrain’s creative choices are more arguable, for example, the hallucinogenic images of choruses of people singing back to her in public spaces. There is the ambiguous role of an interviewer (opaquely played by Kodi Smit-McPhee) with the same name as her prescription medication who forces her to confront her legacy. Some of the flashbacks signal more intriguing elements to her story like her rather inchoate relationship with Aristotle Onassis, her traumatizing encounters with Nazis when she was a child, and an intriguing conversation with JFK (played by Caspar Phillipson cast in the same, somewhat inconsequential role in "Jackie"). Her cloistered existence is left only by two devoted servants played poignantly by Pierfrancesco Favina and Alba Rohrwacher. Still Jolie’s star power has a showcase befitting of her singular talent to convey hubris and vulnerability at almost the same time.. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is one of the biggest TV and streaming premieres this month. Check out our December calendar for more!