{"id":109953,"date":"2024-12-03T13:34:45","date_gmt":"2024-12-03T18:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=109953"},"modified":"2024-12-23T15:43:38","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T20:43:38","slug":"scrutiny-director-pablo-larrains-reimagining-maria-callas-opulent-disaster-cultural-icon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2024\/12\/03\/scrutiny-director-pablo-larrains-reimagining-maria-callas-opulent-disaster-cultural-icon\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Director Pablo Larra\u00edn\u2019s Reimagining Of Maria Callas Is An Opulent Disaster Of A Cultural Icon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"L:
L: Photo of Maria Callas from the television talk show Small World; the program aired in 1958 and was hosted by Edward R. Murrow. (Public domain); R: Maria Callas at Schipol Airport in 1973, in an image from the Nationaal Archief, the Dutch National Archives<\/a>, donated in the context of a\u00a0partnership program.(Public domain, CC0 1.0 UNIVERSAL<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the time the soprano Maria Callas died, she\u2019d lost the voice that\u2019d made her an icon.<\/p>\n

Her voice, which basso Nicola Rossi Lemeni once called \u201ca great ugly voice,\u201d and one critic described as \u201cshocking, like biting into a lemon<\/a>,\u201d was what captivated the culture at large.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne colleague said that Callas had three hundred voices,\u201d writes the critic Wayne Koestenbaum<\/a>. As the books, documentaries, plays and films since her death in 1977 attest, our fascination with her voice endures to a large degree because of the operatic misery of life of the woman behind it.<\/p>\n

Maria, a new film by the Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larra\u00edn and starring Angelina Jolie, re-imagines the last days of the diva assoluta as a hallucinatory expedition towards resurrection.<\/p>\n

\u201cI lived for my art,\u201d she famously sang as Tosca in \u201cVissi D\u2019Arte.\u201d \u201cI lived for love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maria is the story of how she died from a lack of that love, and the loss of inspiration.<\/p>\n

Maria: The Voice<\/h3>\n

Early on in the film, Maria sings a rendition of Verdi\u2019s \u201cAve Maria\u201d to her maid Bruna, played by Alba Rohrwacher, and asks for her honest opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was magnificent,\u201d Bruna lies with a smile, flipping a sizzling omelette.<\/p>\n

Jolie \u2014 who allegedly trained for seven months to prepare for the role \u2014 does in fact sing a few lines here and there, her voice blended with Callas\u2019 historical recordings. But, in order to give us a sense of Callas\u2019 former power, the film flashes back to the past in these sequences, overriding her voice\u2019s immaturity with original recordings.<\/p>\n

As it cuts back and forth, between Jolie and Callas, the juxtaposition between the quality of two voices \u2014 the original and the copy; the artist at her prime and the artist playing her shrinking shadow \u2014 effectively positions the film as a sympathetic, reverential, opulent tragedy.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaturally the voice is not what it used to be 20 years ago,\u201d Callas once said in a TV interview. \u201cThe audience know that, I know it. What is a legend? The public made me.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happens, Maria seems to ask, once the illusion fades for artist and audience alike?<\/p>\n

The Comeback<\/h3>\n

Desperately wanting to make a comeback, Maria allows Bruna\u2019s words to give her the courage to rehearse with the conductor Jeffrey Tate, played by Stephen Ashfield, who said of his time with Callas<\/a> that he, \u201coccasionally got glimpse of the glory through the tatters.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is in these scenes, in a near-empty concert hall, where Maria steps into the spotlight and we witness the artist at work \u2014 albeit at her worst. She comes up against her inability to reach the high notes she once excelled at, before a wobble, that was manageable, cuts itself off.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was Maria singing,\u201d Tate shouts. \u201cI want to hear La Callas!\u201d<\/p>\n

By the look on her defeated face, she knows we\u2019ll never hear it. But, rather than expand on scenes and sentiments associated with her artistic process, the film proceeds to steep itself in the realm of melodrama, to, in Larra\u00edn\u2019s words<\/a>, \u201carbitrarily invent\u201d what he and the screenwriter Steven Knight imagine what might\u2019ve happened behind those infamously curtained windows.<\/p>\n

Similar to documentaries such as Callas, from 1978, and Maria By Callas, from 2017, 2024\u2019s Maria can\u2019t resist the temptation to focus on the impact of her torrid relationship with Aristotle Onassis, played by Haluk Bilginer, or to use the childhood abuses she faced during World War II, or her relationship with her weight, to furnish her traumas to wrangle with.<\/p>\n

From time to time resentment \u2014 towards the public who celebrated and venerated her; the press that praised then defamed her \u2014 bubbles up and pushes hard-won tears from Jolie\u2019s feline eyes. But, rather than \u2014 as was Callas\u2019s way \u2014 express herself, Jolie restrains Maria, so the potential for a range of emotions remains beneath the surface of its botoxed container. What Jolie does excel at is exuding the attitude of a diva, rather than try to impersonate her, but what makes a great performance is a total embodiment of a character, of a dissolution between two souls.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/h3>\n

\u201cNobody can double Callas,\u201d Maria once chided to the press; alas, no one has.<\/p>\n

Maria\u2019s most glaring omission, though, is Callas\u2019s relationship to the music itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone tries to listen to me seriously one will find all of myself in there,\u201d she\u2019d said.<\/p>\n

It was not only the masters, then, that Callas served in her decades-spanning career, but in the making of a self-image. It is in the ecstasies and discontents of opera\u2019s great heroines \u2014 Elvira, Medea, Aida, Isolde, Anna Bolena, La Gioconda \u2014 that one might piece together a portrait that served to complicate the myth rather than compliment what already exists.<\/p>\n

Maria Callas \u2014 the artist, the woman \u2014 was not a mere vessel, for what she did for opera was use her voice to revitalize it and bring the strength of drama back to the stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour voice is in heaven and a million records,\u201d a doctor in the film says to her.<\/p>\n

Her mortal heart stopped. But her heavenly voice goes on, and on.<\/p>\n

By: Nirris Nagendrarajah for LvT<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Maria, a new film by the Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larra\u00edn and starring Angelina Jolie, re-imagines the last days of the diva assoluta as a hallucinatory expedition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40967,23,43,52],"tags":[5033,39743],"yst_prominent_words":[7292,18641,36899,12167,9946,22324,18647,9913,10703,8295,7595,10002,10395,9958,12016],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/12\/Copy-of-Copy-of-INTERVIEW-85.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-sBr","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109953"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110588,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109953\/revisions\/110588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109953"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=109953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}