On Saturday I went to see Pablo Larraín’s Maria with a a friend. My friend cried at the end of the movie. Surprisingly ( to me), I didn’t. I am not quite sure I liked it. Angelina Jolie presumably excels as the tragic Diva; Massimo Cantini Parrini’s costume design was impeccable, as it should, since the source material was already extraordinary as he acknowledges in this interview to Harper’s Bazaar:
Working on the costumes for Maria Callas was not that difficult in terms of finding or drawing inspiration, as Maria Callas was a diva and she had been interviewed and photographed by so many different journalists and people. But beyond the most iconic photographs that we had all seen sooner or later of Maria Callas, I was also able to dig deeper and deeper in my research to find other pictures of where she was portrayed at homes of friends, dining out—a number of events that were not typically those linked to her professional life. That was a great inspiration, and it allowed me to imagine and create her wardrobe, which spans throughout the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.
Costume design in María not only transforms Jolie into La Divina, it also serves as a visual metaphor for the film’s meditation on artistry, identity, and transformation. Through María Callas’ wardrobe, Larraín and Massimo Cantini Parrini articulate the tension between art as a living, breathing force and art as a frozen, ornamental relic
Callas was an artist shaped by both her voice and her image. Her costumes reflect this duality. Onstage, she is adorned in grand, operatic gowns. These gowns are heavy with history, as if carrying the weight of her own myth. These pieces emphasize how she became an icon, a living masterpiece. But offstage, her wardrobe shifts to softer, more intimate attire, revealing the woman beneath the legend. The contrast suggests that while the world sees only the diva, Callas herself wrestles with her own identity beyond the stage.
In her later years, Callas’ wardrobe takes on a different role. The extravagant fashion—high collars, structured silhouettes, luxurious fabrics—becomes almost like a museum exhibit. It serves as a way of preserving an identity that is slipping away. Even as her voice fades, her costumes remain striking. They seem like the last remnants of the persona she spent a lifetime constructing.
As Callas grapples with the loss of her voice, her costumes become more muted, understated—less fireworks, more elegy. The colors may darken, the embellishments may soften, mirroring the internal shift from performance to reflection.
A very long introduction to answer that if I could be someone else for a day, I would choose to be this kind of genius. Not the one shown in the movie. While not everyone knows what it’s like to command an opera house or possess extraordinary talent, we all know and experience, in very different measures, the personal side of decline.
You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks.
To be able to experience for one day what it would feel like having lightning running through your veins, knowing that every note you produce is pure artistic truth. The sheer physical and emotional power required to project that voice, to inhabit roles like Tosca or Norma so completely that the boundary between performance and reality almost disappears…
To know not adoration but to live with the certainty that your extraordinary gift has made a difference in the world through beauty.
Now, I am the same age as Callas was when she died and realize that I really wished I could be myself everyday even if there are so many more spectacular lives than my own.
Stories from A Closet of Errors 