The one and only maria callas biography movie opera soprano britannica

Maria is a film depicting the last days of soprano Maria Callas. Similarly, some observers have been turned off by the trope of the tortured artist. None of such objections matter. All that counts is whether the film works.

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It proceeds with a series of flashbacks not in chronological order some of which go back to her adolescence in Athens. The singer was born in New York to immigrant Greek parents. Her mother moved her and her sisters back to Athens where she spent the war years under German occupation. The Diva is addicted to Mandrax, a combination of methaqualone and diphenhydramine marketed in the US as Quaalude.

Maria takes so many of these pills that she spends most of her time hallucinating. Many of the scenes in her early life are in black and white, a technique that I usually find off-putting but which works here. Her life in Paris is accompanied almost exclusively by her two devoted servants — Bruna her housekeeper and Ferruccio her butler.