The true story behind Angelina Jolie’s 'Maria'
Angelina Jolie is making her triumphant return to the big screen in 2025. Three years after her last appearance in Marvel’s Eternals, the actress is back to play one of opera’s most revered and respected figures, Maria Callas.
The biopic, directed by Pablo Larrain, looks as the singer’s final few days, where she lived as a recluse in Paris with her once-legendary career now in tatters.
Jolie’s performance has been widely praised by critics, who have described her nuanced and thoughtful take on a powerhouse figure looking at her life in decline as “thrilling” and “passionate”.
Jolie believes that studying Callas in preparation for the film resulted in a change of perspective around the star, and the ‘diva’ reputation she earned.
“I think [the word diva] often comes with a lot of negative connotations," she said at the Venice Film Festival, where Maria premiered. "I think I've re-learned that word through Maria... and I have a new relationship to it."
"I think it is often other people's perception of a woman that defines, sometimes too much, who she is and who she was, or what she intended," she added. "And I actually think [Maria] was one of the hardest-working people, who didn't hurt anybody.
"So I suppose it's everybody in this room that makes that definition sometimes, but the true definition may be [that] the great composers define it differently.”
While elements of Larrain’s film appear sensationalised for cinematic effect, Callas’ glamorous and tragic life truly is stranger than fiction. Here are the real events that inspired Jolie’s latest movie...
Who was Maria Callas?
Born in America in 1923 to Greek immigrant parents, Maria Kalogeropoulos (her surname was later anglicised to Callas) moved back to Athens following her parents' divorce when she was 13. It was there that she enrolled in vocal training at the Greek National Conservatory, and honed her skills to become one of the world's greatest operatic singers.
Making her professional debut aged just 17, she had her big break in 1949 when she took over a lead role from a performer who had fallen ill in Die Walküre. Further success followed quickly – she continued performing on international stages throughout Greece, Italy, London and America to great acclaim. In 1956, she opened the New York Metropolitan Opera’s season with a leading role in Norma.
Her impressive vocal range, as well as her chequered love life and stormy temperament, saw Callas dubbed a diva from the very outset of her career. In a review from Time in 1956, the magazine described her “thirst for personal acclaim” as “insatiable”.
However, Callas was somewhat dismissive of the simplistic labels she was assigned throughout her career. “I am not an angel and do not pretend to be,” she is quoted as saying in the 2017 documentary Maria By Callas, which includes never-before-seen footage of the star. “That is not one of my roles. But I am not a devil, either. I am a woman and a serious artist, and I would like so to be judged.”
Was Maria Callas married?
In 1947, Callas met the wealthy Italian magnate Giovanni Battista Meneghini. There was a significant age gap between them – she was just 23, while he was 51 – but he quickly became her manager, then her lover and husband. Their relationship was often fraught, and Callas claimed that her former husband swindled money from her. In an interview with The New York Times in 1970, she said: “He told lies and tried to take credit for everything in my success.”
The pair separated shortly after Callas started a long-standing affair with the shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
How long was the Aristotle Onassis affair?
After meeting at a party in 1957, Onassis invited Callas, and her husband, aboard his yacht, which was regularly frequented by many big names at the time (Winston Churchill was also rumoured to have attended). This is thought to have been the beginning of the pair’s nine-year affair – Callas left her husband just weeks later, while Onassis divorced from his wife in 1960.
The pair’s romance was highly publicised, with Callas reportedly left heartbroken when Onassis married Jackie Kennedy, the widow of President John F Kennedy, in 1968.
Callas did not have any relationship with her family at the time, having estranged herself following her mother’s explosive tell-all book, My Daughter Maria Callas, which was published in 1960. It was an unflattering portrayal of the singer, and focused on the difficulties the pair faced.
“I would never make up with my mother, and I have very good reasons,” Callas told The New York Times in 1970. “She did many wrong things to me, and blood is just not that strong a tie.”
Did Maria Callas lose her voice?
She was an operatic superpower, and at the peak of her career reportedly averaged “50 performances a year”, but Callas’ once-belting voice began to falter in the 1960s.
There’s no clear or definite reason as to why this might have happened; while overuse may be one cause, some experts point towards her dramatic weight loss. The singer lost nearly five stone in three years during the 1950s.
Callas’ final operatic performance was in 1965 in London's Covent Garden. After that, she taught a masterclass at The Juilliard School before embarking on a world tour in 1973, singing in public for the last time in 1974.
Other historians claim that Callas had become dependent on mandrax, a drug that Onassis introduced her to, and that this led to her vocal decline. She was also diagnosed with dermatomyositis in 1975, which caused muscle weakness. While she had previously complained of fatigue and exhaustion, medical experts had previously dismissed her symptoms as ‘hypochondria’.
How did Maria Callas die?
In her final few years, living as a recluse in Paris with only her housekeeper, friend and butler for company, Callas suffered a heart attack in September 1977. She was just 53.
Maria is in cinemas from 10 January.
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