Angelina Jolie and the Extraordinary Ensemble Cast of MARIA | Netflix
Director Pablo Larraín in discussion with the extraordinary cast led by the brilliant Angelina Jolie (Maria Callas), Pierfrancesco Favino (Ferruccio) and Alba Rohrwacher (Bruna).
Angelina Jolie on the Gorgeous, and Tragic World of MARIA | Netflix
SBIFF Q&A Maria with Pablo Larraín & Guy Hendrix Dyas
Meet the Man Behind the On-Screen Singing of Ariana Grande, Timothée Chalamet and Angelina Jolie: Vocal Coach Eric Vetro https://t.co/CsPKKhea15
— Variety (@Variety) December 20, 2024
With Angelina Jolie’s dramatic take on legendary opera diva Maria Callas, the actress portrayed the grand soprano from her aesthetic heights of the 1940s to the early 1950s, as well as the vulnerability of her vocal decline in the mid-50s.
For “Maria,” Vetro assembled, for the first time, a team of three opera singers behind him who, together, worked with Jolie for seven months. “I can sing, but I can’t sing like Maria Callas,” he says, laughing. “Plus, my Italian pronunciation isn’t up to snuff.”
Vetro is in awe of how compelling Jolie is throughout “Maria,” how the actor embodies every nuance and every note of the opera legend.
“Jolie is indeed singing operatically as Callas, the caveat being you’re hearing a mix of Maria Callas’ voice with Jolie’s blended together,” he says of a mash-up vocal process that also took place on “Elvis” between Austin Butler and Elvis Presley.
“Sometimes there’s less Angelina, maybe 10%, other times there’s more Angelina. It changes depending on the aria and on the period as much of the movie focuses on the time when Callas couldn’t sing any longer, or sing in the same way. No matter what or when, Angelina captured every single note and every single emotion. She was astonishing.”
One thing most impressive about having Jolie blend her voice with that of Maria Callas is that the actress had to emulate what the diva did on stage, originally, for the sake of splicing together their performances. In opera, however – unlike, say, pop – there is no steady beat or click track. “Opera has its own ebb and flow, its rubato,” says Vetro. “How in the world would Angelina be able to do that? But watching her sing… Jolie nailed it.”
Ariana Grande, Angelina Jolie, and Timothée Chalamet all have him on speed dial. Meet Hollywood’s not-so-secret weapon, voice teacher Eric Vetro: https://t.co/Ksu3y8K8Va
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) December 21, 2024
When Angelina Jolie sought out Vetro, she was on the opposite end of the spectrum. Jolie needed his help to transform into arguably the preeminent opera diva of all time, Maria Callas. “Not only was she not a singer, she never sang,” Vetro says. “She didn’t even sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ She had a real block about singing.”
Taking someone from “Happy Birthday” to “Piangete Voi?” from Anna Bolena may sound impossible, but Vetro was up for the challenge. In his early days of teaching, he “treated everybody,” Vetro says. “If someone had never sung before, they would send them to me.”
Though Jolie was in the right hands, it took some time to get her opera-ready. “The first lesson, she barely uttered a sound,” Vetro says. “I couldn’t get her to sing. She was very, very, very shy about it.” Vetro enlisted outside help—female opera singers to demonstrate high notes he couldn’t reach, and a fluent Italian speaker to help Jolie with the diction. Little by little, they helped Jolie discover her voice—a poetic parallel to Callas rediscovering her own voice in the twilight of her life in Maria.
“We made the big discovery that she was actually a soprano, which was really surprising to both of us,” he says. “There was one day into it, probably in the middle of the process, when she started singing one of the arias from the movie. And I knew that day it was going to work.”
Of course, in Pablo Larraín’s finished film, Jolie’s voice is heavily mixed with Callas’s own. Still, Vetro says Jolie’s work ethic and deep admiration for Callas were pivotal to her performance. “She loved Maria Callas,” he says. “She felt a lot of empathy for what Maria Callas had been through, how she had been treated in the press—when they would ask her really inappropriate questions about her ex, Aristotle Onassis.” And it all paid off. “By the end of it, she was singing every note, singing every lyric,” he says. “It was a really difficult task. And she rose to the occasion.”
