'The therapy I didn’t realise I needed': Angelina Jolie on playing Maria Callas
Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas in the new film.
After Maria Callas’ death, aged just 53, many reflected on the life and career of the incredibly talented opera singer as one of great tragedy.
Born in the 1920s to Greek immigrants in New York, she had a difficult childhood marked by her father’s infidelity and her parents’ divorce. At 13, she moved to Athens with her mother and sister and began to train as a soprano opera singer, earning the title role of the Royal Opera of Athens’ production of Puccini’s Tosca – playing a 19th-century Roman prima donna driven to a tragic death by the schemes of a powerful man who desires her – just a year later. It proved to be a role which defined Callas throughout her life.
