Angelina Jolie bursts into tears at ‘Maria’ premiere — trained 7 months to be an opera singer
nypost.comthe late opera singer Maria Callas. Per a press release, the movie tells the “tumultuous, beautiful and tragic story of the life of the world’s greatest opera singer, relived and reimagined during her final days in 1970s Paris.”According to Variety, Jolie said she spent seven months learning how to sing opera.“Everybody here knows, I was terribly nervous,” she said at a press conference. “I spent almost seven months training because when you work with Pablo you can’t do anything by half.
He demands, in the most wonderful way, that you really do the work and you really learn and train.”“I had not sung in public before,” she added, noting she was “shaky” the first time she did it.
Maria Callas was a New York City born Greek soprano who was often referred to as the world’s greatest diva. During her dramatic and troubled life, she had a rivalry with fellow singer Renata Tebaldi, near-sightedness that caused her to be nearly blind when she performed onstage, an affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis — who eventually left her for Jacqueline Kennedy — various scandals and bouts of negative press, and a dramatic mid-career weight loss that impacted her voice.
She also died young of a heart attack at age 53 in 1977. “There’s a lot I won’t say in this room that you probably know and assume,” Jolie said at the press conference. “I related to the part of her that is extremely soft and didn’t have room in the world to be as soft as she truly was and as emotionally open as she truly was.
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