Netflix’s Maria showcases a week in the life of celebrated singer Maria Callas after she fell from fame. Played by Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie, the film explores her search to find her voice after years of inactivity.
Callas was a naturally gifted soprano opera singer from a young age and grew to be one of the most well known in the world. Nicknamed “La Divina,” she experienced the highest of highs in her career starring in operas like Medea, Tosca, and La Traviata, but was ultimately plagued by affairs and scandal. Her fame started to dwindle slowly as she couldn’t hit high notes as fluidly anymore. People began to suspect that she lost her voice and she backed away from the spotlight.
Until her death, Callas argued that she didn’t lose her talent. “I never lost my voice, but I lost strength in my diaphragm. … Because of those organic complaints, I lost my courage and boldness. My vocal cords were and still are in excellent condition, but my ‘sound boxes’ have not been working well even though I have been to all the doctors. The result was that I overstrained my voice, and that caused it to wobble.”
How did Maria Callas die?
Maria Callas died of a heart attack, aged 53, on September 16, 1977. After her affair with Aristotle Onassis, she lived alone in Paris for a couple of years before her death. Her funeral took place at St Stephen’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral just four days after her death. She was cremated and interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, and her ashes were stolen. Once they were recovered, her remains were scattered into the Aegean Sea from the Greek coast, as her wish.
Biographer Lindsy Spence theorized that Callas’ underlying health problems contributed to her death. “I tracked down the neurologist who treated her before her death,” Spence told The Guardian. “Callas suffered from a neuromuscular disorder whose symptoms began in the 1950s, but she was dismissed by doctors as ‘crazy’. It also explains the loss of her singing voice, which cut her career short.”
In order to build a narrative for the Netflix movie, Maria screenwriter Steven Knight and director Pablo Larrain focused on Calles rebuilding her talented ability. “Pablo and I picked up on the true fact that, shortly before she died, she was in the process of trying to rebuild her voice but without any real intention of performing for other people,” Knight told Netflix’s Tudum. “Perhaps she wanted to die whole, in one piece, her self and her voice reunited.”
