To prepare for Maria, a biopic about the legendary soprano Maria Callas, Angelina Jolie studied opera with Michael Stevens, Chair of the Vocal Department for Colburn’s Community School of Performing Arts. He had seven short months to prepare her for filming, instilling a knowledge of opera and Callas’s style and idiosyncrasies that would be reflected on the big screen.
“To sing is an expression of your being, a being which is becoming.” — Maria Callas
Acclaimed soprano Maria Callas was an enigma throughout much of her career. The press zoomed in on her personal life while critics exalted her stage presence and, at times, labeled her voice as “unconventional” or “flawed.” Perhaps that complexity is what drew Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie to the lead role in Maria. The biopic was released in limited theaters last month and is currently streaming on Netflix.
Becoming the iconic Callas posed more than just another acting role for Jolie. The film’s director, Pablo Larrain, pushed her to sing like Callas along with actual recordings.
“I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll pretend-sing and I’ll get through this. Then it was very clear to me that you can’t pretend opera and then I was scared,” Jolie explained during the New York Film Festival this fall, reports USA Today.
To recreate Callas’s operatic performances, the movie’s vocal coach, Eric Vetro, tapped his friend Michael Stevens, Chair of the Vocal Department for Colburn’s Community School of Performing Arts.
“He asked me to help with the language and voice teaching because he doesn’t really do opera,” says Stevens. “And since, potentially, we were going to be singing in Italian, French, and German, it was important to have a person who could do voicing and language.”
In addition to teaching at Colburn since 1996 and chairing the department for 16 years, Stevens has carved out a comprehensive career as an artist. He’s performed as a chorister for the LA Opera and sung with the Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Long Beach operas along with other ensembles and choirs around Southern California.
Not only was Maria his first foray into filmmaking, but his challenge was to instill Jolie with enough knowledge of opera performing and Callas’s style and idiosyncrasies in a short seven months. For example, Stevens notes that Callas’s breathing didn’t always occur where one might expect it.
“She certainly had amazing breath control and could sing a note for a long time. But sometimes she was fairly frail, especially as she started to age. When you see her take a big breath, you really see the chest come up and then collapse at the end, which is sort of a no-no in singing. However, it was definitely something I wanted Angelina to notice and use as part of her own technique,” he explains.
“We tried to make sure the pronunciation was correct, and there are some places where Callas didn’t pronounce things exactly like maybe she ought to. So, we had to listen carefully to all of the recordings,” Stevens adds. “One of the main things was making sure Angelina’s mouth looked like what a singer’s mouth looks like. By the end, the postures of her face and lips were very similar to what Callas did, and they definitely looked like a singer.”
Of course, Stevens relied on the teaching techniques he’s devised from years of training aspiring young performers, such as singing in different languages.
“We just went over the Italian language like I would with one of my Colburn students; we very slowly plotted it out,” says Stevens.
Although scheduling sessions meant accommodating both the film production and Jolie’s multiple commitments, Stevens commends her devotion to learning the genre.
“We actually got a lot done in relatively little time and she is such a busy person. She really did work hard at this, practicing every day,” he says. “I think she did great and I was very proud of the results.”
While promoting Maria, Jolie explains how cathartic the experience became for her personally.
“For anybody here who hasn’t sung at the top of their lungs, it’s a crazy thing to do,” she said at the Film Festival. In a video interview with Larrain for Vogue, she added, “ I found [opera music] so deep in the human experience. It’s very grounding so I put it on now to just kind of think and settle.”
Stevens also found a new appreciation for Callas, which he highlights for his Colburn students.
“It’s nice to be able to use Callas as someone who’s doing the same sort of thing that I’m teaching, and I can use her as a demonstration model,” he says. “Knowing that it really affected the performance with Angelina is a good reason for me to incorporate that in my own teaching.”