To celebrate the UK cinema release of Pablo Larraín’s masterpiece on 10 January, a tour honoring Maria Callas’ time in Covent Garden is coming to the Royal Opera House — for one weekend only!
Just in time for the UK cinema premiere of Maria starring Angelina Jolie, in the role of a lifetime, the Royal Ballet and Opera will be hosting an exclusive tour honouring Maria Callas’ time in Covent Garden.
The tour will feature rare behind-the-scenes access, giving visitors unprecedented insight into Maria Callas’ life and her onstage career at Covent Garden. The tour will also give visitors an exclusive, up-close look at two costumes worn by Angelina Jolie in Maria, designed by the celebrated Florentine Oscar nominated costume designer, Massimo Cantini Parrini.
From acclaimed director Pablo Larraín (Spencer, Jackie) Maria tells the tumultuous, beautiful, and tragic story of the life of the world’s greatest female opera singer, relived, and reimagined during her final days in 1970s Paris. La Divina, as Callas was often referred to, had a storied career on the Royal Opera House stage. From making her Covent Garden debut in Norma in 1952 to performing her last ever opera to a packed London audience in Tosca in 1965, Callas’ performances at the Royal Opera House are still revered as some of the best of all time. Describing her own time at the Royal Opera House as a “love affair” Maria Callas’ story is not complete without mentioning her iconic performances on the Main Stage.
Cantini Parrini has a long history of collecting vintage clothes and costumes. One such purchase turned out to be something La Callas owned, as he told Netflix’s Queue magazine. “Maria Callas, like all the ladies of that period, gave away a lot of clothes once they were out of fashion,” he said. “In Italy, she was dressed by Biki [Elvira Leonardi Bouyeure], a very important Milanese designer. I was lucky enough to come across a beautiful brown dress many years ago at a flea market. Inside I saw that it was signed ‘Biki’ and only at home did I notice that on the hem there was a cotton label that said ‘Maria Callas’ with a sequential number, as if it had been catalogued. I was shocked!”
Among the costumes displayed at the Royal Opera House will be the hand painted Medea dress that Jolie wears, donning a dagger. It’s an ivory silk gown with prehistoric cave art designs, as Cantini Parrini explained in an Instagram post on the Maria account.
The tour, which features rare behind-the-scenes access and insight into Maria Callas’ real life will take place for one weekend only, on the 18th and 19th of January 2025, with tickets now on sale via the RBO website. But there are only a few slots remaining.
All photos courtesy of Studiocanal, used with permission