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Maria Callas sang for audiences all over the world, but also in MaryShe is training for her last performance – in front of an audience. The famous opera singer “was always trying to please someone, a relationship, a family member or a friend,” said director Pablo Larraín (Jackie, El Conde) told Netflix. “And now in this film, at the end of her life, she decides to do it for herself. She will try to sing for herself. This is a film about someone who wants to find their own voice and understand their identity.”

To play an icon of the stage, Larraín turned to an icon of the screen: Oscar winner Angelina Jolie. Jolie jumped at the opportunity to work with Larraín. “Not only was it an opportunity to tell the story of Maria Callas, a woman I find interesting and close to my heart, but it was truly a director who takes you on a journey, who takes the work so seriously and is hard on you,” Jolie (herself a director) told Netflix.

So Larraín and Jolie set out to tell the story of Maria Callas’ final days, with the help of a cast and crew dedicated to making a film worthy of Callas’ legendary talent – and her legendary Life – is fair. “We don’t look at her with pity, and I don’t think the audience will feel pity for her,” Larraín said. “I think audiences will understand who she was with such a wonderful performance as Angelina.”

Read on to get answers to all your burning questions Marynow streaming on Netflix.

Did Angelina Jolie really sing along? Mary?

Yes. The opera performances in the film consist of a combination of Jolie’s voice and archival footage of Maria Callas – which meant that Jolie had to train to be an opera singer. “When Pablo said, ‘Can you sing?’ I was like, ‘I mean, sure, a little bit,'” Jolie said. “But the truth is, as he said to me, ‘You have to learn to sing opera, otherwise I’ll be able to tell when we look in your face, because that’s who she is.’ ”

The first part of Jolie’s Callas boot camp focused on the technical skills of opera. “Angie had different phases in her preparation,” Larraín said. “In the beginning it was opera singers and trainers who helped her find the right posture, breathing, movement and accent. She sang very specific operas or arias, most of them in Italian. You have to sing it right and hit the right pitches, and that means you can follow the melody and sing it right.”

But Jolie also worked to channel the art form’s larger-than-life emotions. “You have to give every single part of yourself,” Jolie said. “When opera singers express their pain, it’s not a little, it’s the greatest depth. (It requires) everything you have. It requires your whole body, and you have to be as emotionally full, as open and as loud, with as big a voice as you possibly can.”

Jolie had no safety net on set. Really singing looks It’s different on camera than lip syncing, so it was important to capture their actual physical exertion. “Angelina was absolutely exposed to singing, sometimes in front of 200 or 500 extras, and people only heard Angie’s voice,” Larraín remembers. In the finished film, her voice was mixed with Callas’s. “There are moments in the film where you hear Maria Callas in her prime, where you hear mostly Callas, but there is always a fragment of Angelina,” Larraín said. “And sometimes it’s more Angelina than Callas. It’s a layered track with different voices.”

The complex technical presentation was a relief for Jolie. “The good news about playing Maria Callas is that no one expects you to sing Maria Callas because no one in the world can sing Maria Callas, right?” Jolie said. “Nobody in her time could keep up with her, and it would be a crime not to hear her voice, because in many ways she is very present in this film.” She is, for me, the partner in this film; You and I are doing this together.”

Who is Mandrax?

Mandrax, played by Oscar nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee, is a journalist who accompanies Callas in Paris to interview the reclusive artist. He shares his name with a hypnotic sedative, one of the prescription drugs Callas abused in her final days. The famous singer stopped performing operas in 1965, even though at 41 she should have still been in the prime of her singing career. Instead, years of performing at world-historic levels – as well as a questioned personal life and clashes with the management of top-class opera houses – took their toll on her health and her voice before she died in 1977 at the age of 53.

Did Maria Callas really meet John F. Kennedy?

Yes. In a key flashback, Callas and her partner Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer) attend the famous Madison Square Garden fundraiser where Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy. The real Maria Callas appeared at the same fundraiser and briefly met Kennedy in person afterwards.

In MaryLarraín imagines another meeting where the two of them talk about their lives in the spotlight. “You are rich,” Larraín said. “You are famous. They have an incredible place in this world, but they can’t escape it. The fact that they all belong to this group doesn’t make them friends, but they do belong to the same group of people. This generation of people who saw the world with privilege, but also with authenticity and will.”

It’s another piece of connective tissue for Larraín Jackie. Callas’ longest love affair with businessman Aristotle Onassis represents another such union: Onassis eventually married Kennedy’s widow Jacqueline, who is the focus of Larraín’s film Jackie. We never see Jackie at home Mary, but she is an off-screen presence. Additionally, JFK is played by Caspar Phillipson, the Danish actor who also appeared in the same role Jackie.

“They were people who were loved in their lifetime and remain icons today,” Larraín said of the three women at the center of his films. “Maria and Jackie (and Princess Diana, subject of the director Spencer) were very strong women who lived their lives the way they wanted. And they had natural interactions and connections, not just through Onassis or JFK, but more importantly through the kind of world they lived in and related to.”

This world is the focus of the conversation that Callas has with President Kennedy. “Maria says to JFK when they meet, ‘We are very lucky angels who belong to this very special and lucky group of people’ who can do whatever they want,” Larraín said. Of course, there’s one thing in Callas’ world that Kennedy can’t understand – but maybe his wife could. “It’s a world that was very male, and they had to fight to find their own space – and they did it,” Larraín said.

How works Mary End?

Through Mary, Callas is told in no uncertain terms that her singing career must be ended for health reasons. But in the film’s final moments, the ailing diva gives her final performance, a heartfelt rendition of “Vissi d’Arte.” Tosca (one of the soprano’s greatest roles and the last she ever played on an opera stage, more than a decade earlier). Outside on the street, passers-by stop and hear her voice – but Maria does not appear for them.

“At some point she realizes that her voice will not be strong enough to perform at the highest level, the only level she could ever accept,” Larraín said. It’s a realization that sets Callas on the path the film took her on – through memories of a time when her voice was whole.

“I wanted the experience of the flashback for Maria not to be torture, but rather a liberating repetition.” Mary explained screenwriter Steven Knight. “She rewinds the tape and plays the important tracks. My idea was that by looking back on her life knowing that she was dying, Mary would ultimately find peace and be ready to go where we all go.”

So this final performance is aimed at the most important audience – Maria Callas herself. “Pablo and I recognized the true fact that shortly before her death she was just trying to rebuild her voice but had no real intention of performing for other people” said Knight. “Perhaps she wanted to die whole, in one piece, her self and her voice reunited.”

Exhausted, Maria collapses on the floor of her apartment, near the piano. She has asked her butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) to move back and forth throughout the film. When Ferruccio and the housekeeper Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) arrive back at the apartment, it is too late – La Callas has moved on.

The film ends with an image of Ferruccio and Bruna hugging: the last two people who cared for Callas and now care for each other. “These were real relationships,” Jolie said. In fact, she adds, the real Ferruccio is still alive today and never sold his story to the press. “It’s nice to know that at the end of her life she had some people who really loved her,” Jolie said. “I’m so glad the film honors them because they were such wonderful people who understood her.” Even for a character so beloved on the world stage, that’s all you can really ask for.

Mary is now streaming on Netflix.

The trailer for “Maria”