Monica Bellucci, the soul of Maria Callas in NYC

Monica Bellucci during our interview in NYC, photographed by Liam Campora for @360ofOpera

A #360ofOpera interview with Monica Bellucci, who interprets the role of Maria Callas at the Beacon Theatre in NYC on January 27, directed by Tom Volf.

Welcome to 2023, the year of Maria Callas’ centennial. I am thrilled to have had the chance to speak with Monica Bellucci in person about Maria Callas: Letters and Memoirs. I have been following this show online for the last 3 years, but have yet to experience it live. On our first #MariaMonday of this very special year I hope you enjoy learning more about Monica Bellucci’s work and her upcoming performance as Maria Callas in NYC.

I’ve had deep respect for Tom Volf’s work since attending his Maria by Callas film premiere at The New York Film Festival in 2018, a documentary offering an intimate look at the life and work of Maria Callas, as told in her own words. Recently, in the summer of 2022, I was also lucky to attend the Maria by Callas Experience exhibition by Jam Capsule in Paris. Supervised by Tom Volf - author, director, curator of the exhibition - this immersive scenography with giant projections in 360° offers the opportunity to rediscover La Divina’s greatest performances and interviews.

“One day, I will write my autobiography, I would like to write it myself in order to clear things up. There have been so many lies told about me…” Maria Callas once said. Giving Maria, the woman, a voice to tell her own story seems to be Tom Volf’s main goal in all these works, a noble mission I support with great admiration.

During his research for this documentary, Tom Volf found and used a lot of material from Maria Callas’ personal letters and memoirs. This inspired him to follow up by developing his book and theatre project, Maria Callas: Letters and Memoirs, for which he thought of Monica Bellucci to bring Maria to life. “I don’t know why Tom thought about me, maybe because there is a Mediterranean energy in some way.”, declares Monica Bellucci during our conversation, with stunning humility and honesty. “I’m Italian so of course I knew about the the image of Maria Callas and the artist she was, but `I didn’t know much about her as a person in detail.”

Since her very first movie appearances in 1991, Monica Bellucci has worked with the greatest international filmmakers. A popular heroine and the muse of auteur films, her parts range from James Bond Girl in Spectre, to Cleopatra in Asterix and Obelix, Persephone in The Matrix Trilogy, all the way to Alex in Irréversible or Nathalie in Doberman. Acclaimed several times as the world's most beautiful woman, she is one of the best-known faces of contemporary international cinema.

When Tom Volf approched her for this Maria Callas project, interpreting the role of an opera singer was not a first for Monica Bellucci. In 2016, she played the role of Alessandra “La Fiamma”, an international diva in the process of reinventing herself, on season 3 of Amazon’s hit series Mozart in the Jungle. “When I did Mozart in the Jungle I was looking for attitudes and expressions of singers, so I observed Caballé, Netrebko, Callas, to start to understand how to move on the stage as an opera singer. But then when Tom Volf approached me it was a completely different story. I really had the feeling that through these letters and memoirs `I could find the real Maria Callas. What really moved me in this project was the duality between La Divina, the diva with immense talent, and this woman with a simple heart, the one who died of sadness, of a broken heart.”

Monica Bellucci (La Fiamma) and Gael García Bernal in Mozart in the Jungle (Season 3) | Photo Credit: Amazon

While she was not new to the role of the opera singer, this project marked Monica Bellucci’s stage debut. “When Tom Volf asked me to be a part of this project, after having done his incredible research including personal letters by Callas, I was incredibly happy, even though I was very scared because it was my first time performing on the stage. The relationship  with the public is very different: it’s direct, sincere, there is something magic, the audience can feel your soul and you can’t lie. In cinema you are protected, you are like a family, your are close, you can repeat things…”

Since its debut at Studio Marigny in Paris in 2019, the show has toured the world, but Monica Bellucci still feels that same freshness and adrenaline from day one. “I still am scared. Every time I think it’s going to be different, but every time I’m about to go on stage I ask myself why I’m doing it. It’s painful, even though its beautiful. For an hour and a half you have to give this strong emotion and you also receive it back from the public at the same time, you are sharing the same breath. It’s a beautiful thing but completely new.”

Concerning the collaborative work with Tom Volf over the years, Monica Bellucci admits that it keeps changing with each performance, because the show itself continues to be re-adapted depending on the language it is performed in, and the venue. “We can do this work together because both of us are constantly in three different cultures. We know each other more and more. He’s been with Maria Callas for so long. I don’t know what’s next for him, it’s been his passion for so long, and I am honored that he thought that I could give something to the soul of Maria.”

When asked about the impact of this project on her development as an actor, Monica Bellucci recognizes that this new, yet challenging experience has pushed her to the next level. “Now when I make a movie, sometimes it seems so simple. It’s just the camera instead of a big audience out there. I think with this project I learned a lot about my possibilities. It never ends, you learn until the end. In this job you also always need to feel alive, to feel strong emotions and nothing is stronger than theatre. I have to thank Maria Callas for this gift she gave to me. She used to say that music inspired her life and she wanted to share this with the public. And I have to say that when I read her letters and memoirs, I was so inspired by them that I wanted to share this with other people. Then if its called theatre, it’s theatre. But for me it’s beyond theatre, I felt I couldn’t say no, I had to do it.”

After three years of interpreting Maria Callas’ inner thoughts and own words on stage, Monica Bellucci has very valuable insight to share about an often misunderstood woman. “Many people thought she was very strong, sometimes hard. But really, she was just uncompromising and so dedicated to her work with all her heart and soul. And I think she is inspiring today because she was a sincere woman and she had the courage to follow her heart, her emotions. She was unpredictable. She sacrificed her youth for work and then when she met Onassis, she wanted to live this sensation fully, because through him she discovered her femininity.”

The fascination we still experience for Maria Callas seems to be rooted in the honesty of her communication, on and off the stage, which becomes evident in this theatre piece. “It’s incredible, she was so secure of herself when she speaking about her work, and then when she was talking about life and relationships she was so childish. She worked all her life so she didn’t really know men or life, and that is what is so touching. There is something real. I think this is why we still talk about her today. People listen to her but they also want to see Maria, that’s why in this play we depict more Maria than La Callas. From her hopeful and excited youth to her success, maturity, difficulty in finding balance between her work and private life, and then the last years of her life, where she handled her melancholy with extreme elegance.”

Monica Bellucci sees Maria’s childlike sincerity, as something that might have been dangerous to herself, yet attractive to everyone else. “Maybe that’s why people felt that she was real. That’s why she was a great actress too, a great performer. Even when she did Medea, the Pasolini film, I was shocked how modern she was in the way she was acting. So simple, no artificial or grand operatic acting. The emotions were coming out through her eyes. Everything was there in her face. She was like an actress from Godard… completely natural.”

Sharing her thoughts about Maria Callas’ life, Monica Bellucci makes us understand that the show can also offer all of us some lessons. “With a performer like Maria Callas we learn so much. Today we know that we have to be careful not to make one thing of the artist, the image and the person, which can be dangerous. You can’t give all of you on stage. Cinema is a representation of life but it is not life, so you have to be careful. Maria was so sincere and so real, and it was another period of time. I think at moments she mixed both, and that’s why sometimes she was in danger. Because she was La Divina in all aspects of her life, and that cost a lot for her. And then there was this private, private side that was completely different, and she became so lonely in the end. When you are in the light so much and you don’t protect yourself, you can’t distinguish people who come to you for the wrong reasons, and I think that many people came to her life for the wrong reasons. To take her light but not give anything back.”

Coming from the fashion and film worlds, Monica Bellucci explains that she quickly realized the opera world is its own big world, and she feels it’s a world that can be also quite closed. “Maria moved from that world and became a star like The Rolling Stones. People would wait in line for her. She represented something that we can’t imagine today, people are still talking about her to this day. Coming from the opera world… there was the artist, but there was also something we can’t explain, there was something magic about her.”

Monica Bellucci at The Beacon Theatre in NYC. Photo Credit: @metropolitanentertainment

The show is structured in three chronological parts, divided between three decades: the 1950's, her first stage performances and her wedding with Meneghini, the 1960's, meeting Onassis and their romance, broken up eight years later, and the 1970's, her last years, filled with loneliness, to which Monica Bellucci comments: “The greatest wound of her life wasn’t Onassis. It was that she didn’t have children , a family, from the beginning of her life the relation with love was so difficult and that’s why maybe even if she received all this love from the audience, in her intimacy she was lonely. A loneliness that was there from the beginning, a black hole.”

The set design to accompany the narration is simple, with a sofa center stage, the exact reproduction of the one that used to be on Avenue Georges Mandel, the Paris apartment where Callas spent the last 15 years of her life. At the end of the sofa we see a gramophone, on which Maria used to listen to her own recordings and to her bel canto favorites.

“We’ve done the show in two different versions, without the orchestra, which is very intimate, and with orchestra. Here in NYC it will be with orchestra, which I’m so happy about. With the orchestra it’s magic, The Beacon is already a beautiful theatre, so with the orchestra, it will be the cherry on the cake. The other performances with the orchestra were in Greece and Châtelet, it was amazing. In Greece an audience member came to me and told me she was friends with Maria. She said: “you don’t have her voice but you have her soul”, and that really moved me. It was so beautiful. She even gave me a little present, an icon. She said Maria always had one with her.”, Monica Bellucci shares, visibly still touched by this story.

A fascinating detail about these performances comes in the form of fashion. Monica Bellucci wears one of Callas’ original Yves Saint-Laurent dresses to perform. This dress, kept away in secrecy for more than 60 years, had never been worn by anyone else before this tour.

This NYC stage debut is an exciting first for Monica Bellucci, one she didn’t see coming. “I came to NYC when I was a model, very young, and it was too overwhelming for me. I came from a little town in Italy, Paris was already big for me. But when I come now from Paris to NYC, I feel that in Paris I’m in the countryside. Because NYC has an incredible energy, while Europe is more calm. Now that I’m older, I feel more ready to deal with that contrast. NYC is beautiful and interesting, but it is also a lot all at once… so unique and magic.”

Concerning the future of the show, Monica Bellucci insists that this NYC performance must be the one to end the tour, since Maria was born in NYC and 2023 marks the year of her centenary. “This is a beautiful small project, even thought we toured the world, we didn’t expects this success. I never thought when we started in Paris that this tour would become so international, with stops in Greece, London, Instanbul, Spain, Montecarlo…so many places, and now here in NYC. I thought we had to end here, so it can remain a beautiful nice jewel. This is a sign, NY has to be the end.”

However, the project will live on in the form of a documentary, with material recorded from several cities, including visits to Maria Callas’ house in Paris. “I’m so happy about the documentary because it’s been such a beautiful experience and now it will stay forever, like a film.”

Regarding other future projects around the topic of Maria Callas, Monica Bellucci admits to have received some interesting offers, which she’d rather put on hold for now. “They already asked me to play Medea next… a producer saw the show and asked me. I prefer to wait, I need to recover from this project first and then we will see. But that would be amazing…with the orchestra and the costumes we already have in Rome… But it’s such crazy work, so not right now. I need some time.”

Monica Bellucci invites opera connaisseurs and new comers alike to experience this one night only event at The Beacon Theatre. “It’s going to be a moment of emotion humanity, poetry, and I think that in this time we all need that.”

I would like to personally thank Monica Bellucci and her team for the warm welcome and generous time they offered Liam and I so we could bring this interview to @360ofOpera followers. We were both deeply moved an inspired after this meeting. We look forward to seeing you at the show!

Eugenia Forteza and Monica Bellucci during our interview in NYC, photographed by Liam Campora for @360ofOpera

We will be holding an exclusive Ticket Giveaway on our Instagram account next #MariaMonday January 16, 2023. Stay tuned and participate for a chance to win a pair of tickets to the show!

~ written by Eugenia Forteza