Maria Callas’s final aria: an ode to a voice that echoes eternity

With the release of Pablo Larraín’s new biopic Maria, starring Angelina Jolie, the world is once again drawn into the life of Greek-American opera legend Maria Callas, whose artistry, ambition and isolation were inseparable from her myth. The film premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2024 and has been streaming on Lionsgate Play in India since May 9, 2025.

A childhood marked by struggle

Maria Anna Cecilia Kalogeropoulos was born in New York in 1923 to Greek immigrant parents. Her childhood was marred by family discords and poverty. When her parents separated, her mother took Maria and her sister back to Athens, just before World War II. Life in wartime Greece was bleak, but within that landscape, a remarkable voice came into being.

Maria trained at Athens Conservatoire under soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who saw not only the potential but the ferocity in her voice. She practised obsessively, isolated from friends, fuelled by her mother’s ambition and her own growing hunger for greatness. She would later say her youth was stolen from her by music.

A meteoric rise

Her professional debut came in the 1940s in Athens, but it was in post-war Italy that her legend started to crystallise. By the age of 25, Maria had conquered the major Italian stages, singing with an intensity that audiences had not seen in decades. At Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, she redefined operatic acting.

Maria brought Bel Canto opera -- long considered decorative and outdated -- back into cultural prominence. In works by Bellini, Donizetti and early Verdi, she found emotional depth. Her Norma was torn between motherhood and priestly duty. Her Lucia descended into madness with devastating realism. These were not just performances. They were revelations.

Her voice was unusual: expansive in range, volatile in colour, capable of both lyrical delicacy and volcanic force. Critics sometimes called it uneven. But even those who questioned her technique admitted they could not look away.

Glamour and grit

By the 1950s, Maria had become a global celebrity. Her drastic weight loss transformed her physically and visually aligned her with the ‘fashion elite’. Designers such as Dior and Biki dressed her, photographers pursued her, and tabloids devoured every detail of her life.

But the transformation was not without cost. Many believed her voice became fragile after the physical change. Others pointed to the sheer emotional toll her performances exacted. Either way, her career began to slow by the early 1960s.

Offstage, her relationship with the Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, made headlines. When he left her for Jacqueline Kennedy, Maria was  devastated. Those who knew Maria, said she never recovered emotionally, though she rarely spoke about it in public.

Jolie’s Maria

In her final years, Maria withdrew from limelight, living in solitude in her Paris apartment. Friends noted her growing frailty (physical and emotional). She had become dependent on a particular sedative that was prescribed for insomnia and anxiety during the 1960s and ’70s.

According to several biographers, Maria’s reliance on prescription medication intensified post Onassis’s marriage to Jacqueline. She reportedly battled bouts of depression, irregular heartbeat and fluctuating weight in the early 19’70s. Though these were rarely acknowledged in public, Maria too concealed her pain behind dark glasses, tailored suits, and carefully worded silences.

It is this fragile, human side that director Pablo Larraín explores in Maria, his introspective biopic starring Angelina Jolie. Set entirely in the last years of the singer’s ife, the film avoids the grandeur of her career, and instead, lingers on the quiet rituals of memory: letters, old videos, echoes of applause. Angelina’s portrayal, informed by months of archival research, is inward and dignified. She plays Maria, not as a legend, but as a woman who once commanded the stage, but now, wrestles with silence.

What emerges is not a portrait of a diva, but of a woman confronting the ghosts of her former self.

A legacy etched in sound

Maria died in 1977, at the age of 53. Her ashes were scattered in the Aegean Sea, not far from the land that had shaped her identity. Even in death, as in life, she was elusive — no autobiography, no farewell interviews, only an echo of her voice. In 2023, Athens inaugurated the Maria Callas Museum, marking her centenary with a collection of personal objects, costumes, recordings and letters. The museum reflects not only her artistic legacy but her enduring relevance to opera, theatre and performance.

Her recordings remain widely studied and sold. Even today,no soprano can sing Tosca, Norma or La Traviata without facing comparison to Maria.But her influence is not measured only in sound. She changed the expectations of what an opera singer could be: not merely a singer, but an actor, a thinker and human being on stage.

The flame that endured

Maria was never content to be admired from a distance. She demanded engagement. Her artistry was messy, raw, sometimes painful. She reached into roles and ripped them open. Her voice cracked. She missed notes. But she was never boring. She made the audience feel.

In an era of perfection, hers is a voice that reminds us of something more human. She did not hide her pain, but transformed it. In doing so, she changed the face of opera.

Perhaps that is why Maria Callas still matters. Not because she was flawless, but because she was fearless.

Published - May 21, 2025 08:21 pm IST