Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas Hallucinates with Mandrax in "Maria"

Angelina Jolie is winning acclaim and award nominations for her portrayal of O.G. opera diva Maria Callas in the movie Maria, which follows Callas through the last seven days of her life, with fuzzy flashbacks to her earlier days. It is the third and final film in a trilogy depicting iconic 20th-century women from Chilean director Pablo Larrain, following Jackie (2016) starring Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy and Spencer (2021) with Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana. 

In Maria, Callas is shown taking Mandrax, a combination of the hypnotic sedative drug methaqualone (Quaaludes*) and the anti-histamine/sedative diphenhydramine (Benadryl). Popular in Europe in the 70s, commercial production of Mandrax was halted in the mid-1980s due to its widespread abuse and addictiveness.  

An imaginary young filmmaker whose name is Mandrax appears to interview Callas, setting up a conversation between her and the drug, or her hallucination while taking it. By this strange conceit Maria's life is revisited as she works on recovering her largely lost etherial singing voice just before dying. 

To prepare for her role, Jolie spent seven months training to sing opera. Mostly she lip-synched to Callas's divine recordings, but she did that well. The film premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival where Jolie received a "rapturous" eight-minute standing ovation towards the end of the screening.

Jolie has said she doesn't enjoy marijuana, but that by the age of 20, she'd used "just about every drug possible," including heroin. Episodes of depression and two suicide attempts, plus a nervous breakdown at age 24 lead to her being institutionalized for 72 hours at the UCLA Medical Center psychiatric ward. Her breakthrough role, for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, was as a wild child institutionalized with Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted. She won Golden Globe and SAG awards for playing model Gia Carangi, a heroin addict who died of AIDS in 1986. "Playing the madness and insanity, hearing voices, there's my wheelhouse," Jolie said of her approach to the role as Callas. 

One of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century, "La Callas" aka La Divina ("The Divine One") was highly praised for her bel canto technique, powerful and wide-ranging voice, and dramatic interpretations. 

Born in New York City to Greek immigrant parents, Callas began her musical education in Greece at age 13 and later established her career in Italy. In a flashback, the film shows her and her sister at a young age prostituted to German soldiers by their mother while the family was poverty stricken during WWII. 

Callas burst on the scene with roles like the Druid princess Norma in the Bellini/Romani opera, where she sings to a Moon Goddess:

 

Casta Diva, che inargenti 

Chaste Goddess, how silvery

Queste sacre, queste sacre

These sacred, these sacred 

Queste sacre antiche piante...

These sacred ancient plants

Overweight as a child and into her career, some think Callas's voice lost its power when she rapidly lost 80 pounds in her 20s to look more attractive onstage, reportedly modeling herself on Audrey Hepburn. She seems to have never gotten over her lover Aristotle Onassis marrying Jackie Kennedy, although in the film he's shown putting Callas down as she outshines him.  She reportedly was impregnated more than once by Onassis, who either wouldn't support her having his child, or she was unable to. In the 70s, reporters began castigating her for her fiery temperament and waning voice, instead of laying the flowers at her feet she deserved.

I couldn't find record of Callas taking Mandrax, and Maria's screenwriter Steven Knight admits it's a stretch, though she is said to have used or abused weight loss and other prescription drugs. Records do show that she took cortisone and immunosuppressants to treat dermatomyositis, a degenerative disease that affects the muscles and tissues, including the larynx. In the film, she says she takes them to keep from becoming a frog. That a singer of her magnitude should be stricken with such a disease is a tragedy of operatic proportions, akin to Beethoven losing his hearing.  The drugs used to treat dermatomyositis can ultimately lead to heart failure. Maria Callas died of cardiac arrest at the age of 53. 

In Maria, the last aria she sings is "Vissi d'arte" from Tosca by Puccini: 

Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore...
I lived for art, I lived for love 

Nell'ora del dolore

perché, perché,
Signore, perché me ne rimuneri così?
In this hour of grief,
why, why,
Lord, why do you reward me thus?

Her death scene gets the Hollywood treatment, complete with an imaginary orchestra, but I was glad to see her exalted in this way. Brava.