We know Angelina Jolie’s talents are vast. The Oscar-winner has been an action star, used her celebrity for significant humanitarian, causes, and directed $100 million dollar-grossing historical epics. We have no doubt she could sing in a movie musical, but pulling off an Opera aria? That’s a tall order for any inexperienced singer. Pablo Larraín had faith.
READ MORE: “Maria” Review: Pablo Larraín’s biopic Starring Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas
To play the legendary Opera diva Maria Callas in Larraín’s “Maria,” Jolie received months of vocal training. She put in the work to ensure her performance was as authentic as possible. In a conversation earlier this month, Larraín explained how the production recorded everything Jolie did. Not just her vocals, but her breath, the sound of her clothing rustling, everything. Those sounds were then mixed in with select original vocals from Callas.
“Sometimes it’s 1% Angelina times two, 5%, sometimes it’s 60%, but most of the time when you’re really listening, it’s Callas,” Larraín says. “You don’t want to make a movie about Callas without Callas’ music. That would be insane. But at the same time, you have to make it believable, and the way that you make it believable is with the actor in this case, Angelina truly singing out loud with all her heart out there. And that’s not only the best way to shoot this, to make it believable and truthful, but it was also the best way to have Angelina approach the character and get to her by singing and working out the singing in detail.”
Throughout our interview, Larraín discusses his “incredible” and lifelong love for Callas, why he selected this subject matter after “Jackie” and “Spencer,” and much more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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The Playlist: You’ve already tackled the lives of Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana. What made you want to cover the life of this incredible diva?
Pablo Larraín: Oh, I grew up listening to her singing. I love her so much. I have such an admiration. It was a different task because she’s an artist, unlike Jackie and Diana. And I also wanted to try to put together in one movie my biggest love for this, for opera and cinema. And I think there’s has so much in common and so many things that you can do to work with both elements. So, that was the aim, and I think that Maria Callas is not very well known in the United States, but very well known in Europe and Latin America, and eventually in Asia, and I thought it was good to have an opportunity to put her back on the map with this little movie that could maybe help a little bit in her legacy. But mostly the biggest answer for that is my love for her, my invincible love for her music and her life.
Was the idea of chronicling her life something you’d always had in the back of your head, even before you did “Jackie,” or was it something that came to you afterward?
Well, I love her music and I was always very curious and wondered why there’s so very few movies about opera. So, somehow in the back of my head, I said “I’m not going to do this because this is going to be a reason why it’s so odd given so many things they have in common.” But after doing “Jackie” and “Spencer,” I thought that maybe I could try to do something with it. I could try to maybe see if this incredibly difficult and particular life that brought us some of the best music of the 20th Century could be together in a movie that it just can celebrate her life with joy and the necessary drama and melodrama. Because this a matter of drama, that has a tragic ending like most operas that Maria Callas sang and maybe to make a movie where she, Maria, becomes the sum of the tragedies that she played on stage.

Do you remember when you realized that this would in a way, or at least from my interpretation, sort of bookend “Jackie”? Primarily because of the inclusion of their shared love of Aristotle Onassis?
Well, I think that what’s important to understand there is that these three women, I mean Diana’s a little bit later, but they shape the second half of the 20th century and they belong to a certain society that really knew each other. There’s not only Onassis and the Kennedys but there’s a whole bunch of people that were related to each other. Whether it’s from Monaco, from Italy, from France, from New York, aristocracy, Washington, the East Coast, the West Coast, there was a generation of people where they [belonged]. So yeah, there are some people in common that are portrayed in the film, but there are many, many others. If you dig into it, the people that they had in common are a lot bigger. I don’t want to make a multiverse of these people, these characters. One movie came after the other one, Darren Aronofsky invited me to do “Jackie.” Then I thought that maybe there was a good interesting idea around Diana that has not been portrayed in that angle. And then I found myself in the possibility of trying to tackle a film of someone that I really, really love. I love her music, and I think her life is so beautiful, and dramatic. And maybe there was a chance to make a movie that could put opera out there. To be an opera itself, and that eventually could make people interested in opera. People that have never been interested in opera, now they might be interested in opera, and that’s a grace and a beautiful thing.
Was Angelina forefront in your mind when you wrote the script? Or did that casting idea come afterward?
Do you mean what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Is that the question?
Sure.
No, I said to my brother I’d like to make this movie. And then we talked to our friend producers, and then before hiring Steve Knight, I talked to Angelina and after some process among us, she accepted. And then I called Steve and said, “I have an idea.” I said about Maria Callas and would do the last week of her life. I will do this, this, this, and that, and Angelina will play the main role. He said, “O.K., beautiful.” And he started working.
I’ve heard that yes, Angelina sings, but there’s also audio of Maria intermixed. Is that correct?
Yeah. The way you do this should properly be done. Well, [we had] a large team of technicians and teachers and singers. This is made by a lot of people, and basically, she trains very, very hard because this is not pop music. It’s not that she can sing. She’s not singing…
She’s not singing in the shower.
No, no, no. She’s not singing in the shower. She’s not singing a David Bowie song or a Taylor Swift song while she’s driving that we can all do a pretty decent job following the melody. This is opera singing that has a very, very complex pitch and structure that you have to follow and you need to train a lot to do that. All of these things spend the entire life to get there. So, basically what we did is what you see in the film is someone that trained very hard, for each of the six melodies that she sings on camera and she trained for over two months or one month and a half each. She had an earpiece and everything that sounded when we were recording the music was her voice, Angie’s voice. So we would record everything that emerged for her, not just the voice itself, but every sound, the breath, the clothing, everything. And then we capture that, and then we mix it with Maria’s voice. Sometimes it’s 1% Angelina times two, 5%, sometimes it’s 60%, but most of the time when you’re really listening, it’s Callas. You don’t want to make a movie about Callas without Callas’ music. That would be insane. But at the same time, you have to make it believable, and the way that you make it believable is with the actor in this case, Angelina truly singing out loud with all her heart out there. And that’s not only the best way to shoot this, to make it believable and truthful, but it was also the best way to have Angelina approach the character and get to her by singing and working out the singing in detail.
If you’re chronicling a historical figure like Jackie Kennedy or Princess Diana, it’s in the public record. You can tell their story but, in this case, you were using some of her music. Did you feel like you had to earn the blessing of the surviving Callas family before moving forward?
Well, we worked it out with Warner who owns all the music, and there are two foundations, one in Monaco and another one in France, and we collaborate with both of them at some extent. Yeah.
I don’t think you’ve ever made a movie with this much live music or singing. Did you have any trepidation about tackling it?
It was challenging, but at the same time, it was fascinating. I love music and being able to put those two elements in a movie, it’s just one of the greatest gifts. When, I don’t know, I think that I [will] direct an opera. Opera is a good part of my life, and I think it’s so odd that there are very few movies that deal with opera and I really think that there was a chance to make a movie where you could bring opera into the cinema and the cinema into the opera and just combine it. So, of course, I just needed a lot of discipline. I worked really, really hard just like everyone else did, like Angelina herself. But I loved it. I was never scared. I just wanted to get it right. And since I love it that much, just following my passion was good enough to keep me breathing and pushing.

You were a fan of hers. You knew a lot about her life, but when you really dived in to tell this story, was there one thing that you found out about her that surprised you?
Yeah, I think the sense of stoicism, and I think Angie saw that better than I did as she was performing. If you look at Maria’s life, she was always very stoic and always protected her life in private and in public. She was able to put herself together and move on and struggle and fight. She was a fighter, and that stayed with me in a very admirable way.
It has not gotten substantial distribution outside of France yet, but at Cannes, there was a new movie that has a Callas callback called “Marcello Mio.” It’s about Chiara Mastroianni coming to terms with the legacy of her father, Marcello Mastroianni. Anyway, she talks about her life as a child living with her mother in Paris. Their apartment was above Maria’s.
Marcello’s apartment.
It was Catherine’s, yes.
In Aman Mandel 36 in Paris. She lived in the, could be around third floor. The top penthouse was owned by Marcelo and Catherine.
There’s a scene in it where she talks about being a kid lying on the floor and listening to Maria rehearse for hours below her. You might appreciate that moment.
I don’t know if someone lives in that apartment from the Mastriani family. Maybe Chiara, I don’t know. But yeah, I was in that apartment and it was part for Richard, but yeah. Yeah, that’s all true.
“Maria” is now playing in select theaters. It arrives on Netflix in the United States on Dec. 11.