Angelina Jolie accepts the Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actress, for her role in “Maria,” a film about opera singer Maria Callas, at the 36th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala in California. This award recognizes outstanding achievements in cinema.
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.
Who Was Maria Callas?
Born in America in 1923 to Greek immigrant parents, Maria Kalogeropoulos (later Callas) returned to Athens at 13 after her parents’ divorce. She trained at the Greek National Conservatory, becoming a renowned opera singer. Debuting professionally at 17, her breakthrough came in 1949 with a lead role in Die Walküre. International acclaim followed, with performances across Greece, Italy, London, and America. She opened the 1956 New York Metropolitan Opera season with Norma.
Her vocal range, love life, and temperament earned her the “diva” label. Time magazine in 1956 described her “insatiable thirst for personal acclaim.” Callas rejected such labels: “I am not an angel…nor a devil. I am a woman and a serious artist.” She married Giovanni Battista Meneghini in 1947, but they separated after she began an affair with Aristotle Onassis in 1957. Their nine-year romance ended when Onassis married Jackie Kennedy in 1968.
Callas was estranged from her family after her mother’s unflattering biography, My Daughter Maria Callas. Her powerful voice faltered in the 1960s, possibly due to overuse or dramatic weight loss. Her final operatic performance was in 1965. She taught at Juilliard and toured, last singing publicly in 1974. Some attribute her vocal decline to mandrax use or dermatomyositis, diagnosed in 1975. Living reclusively in Paris, she died of a heart attack in 1977 at 53.
Maria is in cinemas from January 10th.