Warner Classics Releases Motion Picture Soundtrack from New Maria Callas Biopic, "Maria"

The album features archival recordings of Maria Callas, as well as the original music composed for the film

Warner Classics has recently released the original motion picture soundtrack from Maria, the 2024 film by Pablo Larraín about the renowned soprano Maria Callas. The film stars Angelina Jolie in the title role and covers the isolated final week of Callas's life — during which she had only her butler and housemaid to nurse her.

The album comprises 27 tracks, some of which are sung by Callas and some of which are from the original music written especially for the film.

In Maria, the singing that audiences hear is a blend between Callas's voice (taken from recordings) and that of Angelina Jolie, so that the sound color makes sense in the context of Jolie's speaking voice.

However, the producers decided that the voice heard on the album should be pure Callas — and so they set about isolating her sound from that of the orchestras on each historic recording of her singing.

The production team then tidied up each of these recordings, removing all of the quirks of archival sound. The sound of Callas's voice was then added to new orchestral recordings, made by music supervisor Csaba Faltay and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra.

You can hear the entire album on a streaming service of your choice here.

"The music was her life," said Angelina Jolie of Maria Callas. "Her relationship to her voice and her body, her ability to sing, her presence on stage and her communication with the audience, it was her life. It was the key to her as well."

"You can watch the story of Maria play out in words and actions, but then the gods and spirits take over when the music plays," said screenwriter Steve Knight.

"Opera is a form of transcendence, and it’s a form of expressing emotions that you cannot say with words," added Pablo Larraín.