Did Maria Callas Really Have Drug-Fueled Hallucinations, as Seen in Maria?

In Maria, the new Netflix film starring Angelina Jolie as opera legend Maria Callas, the reclusive singer hallucinates that she is interviewed by a “handsome interrogator” — a journalist named Mandrax.

It’s a storytelling device by director Pablo Larraín and screenwriter Steven Knight that allows us to look back on crucial events in the life of the 20th century’s most celebrated opera singer, an American-born Greek soprano who died in Paris in 1977 at the age of only 53.

In the film, she tells Mandrax (Kodi Smi-McPhee) that many of the stories about her are “pure fabrication.”

But Mandrax himself is a pure fabrication — before he arrives, we see Maria taking pills, and the camera lingers a long time on their label, Mandrax. The pills, the film indicates, are the source of her hallucinating.

And in case anyone missed the fact that the pills and the interviewer share a curious name, Jolie herself spelled it out in an interview last week with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show:

“She’s talking to her drugs,” Jolie told Fallon. “If you look closely, it’s a big opera. … She did many performances and many tragedies in many operas. You don’t have to know opera to understand the film or appreciate the film, but if you do know opera, you can understand that there’s a lot of why things come at a certain time and how she’s the sum of the tragedies that she played in her life. And the film is kind of an opera.”

Opera asks audiences to suspend their disbelief for the sake of a good story: No one ever stands up and objects, “Why are these people singing to us?” As Jolie’s Callas says in the film, “There is no reason in opera.”

Larraín’s Maria similarly asks the audience to go along for the ride, especially when it comes to Callas’ hallucinations.

MovieMaker talked to two Callas experts about whether there was a verified history of her hallucinating. They are Wellesley College psychology professor Paul M. Wink, who wrote a book about her, Prima Donna: The Psychology of Maria Callas, and documentarian and author Tom Volf, who directed the 2017 film Maria by Callas, wrote three books about her, and spoke to the Maria filmmakers as they worked on the film.

Both agreed that the film takes major poetic liberties when it comes to Callas’ hallucinations in the film. At the same time, neither objects.

Maria Callas, Mandrax and Hallucinations

Researchers have linked Mandrax to hallucinations, but neither Wink nor Volf found any evidence that Callas had hallucinations of any kind.

Mandrax is a combination drug that included both methaqualone — a hypnotic sedative — and diphenhydramine, an antihistamine and sedative. Mandrax was discontinued in the mid-1980s due to widespread addictiveness.

Wink said that Callas did indeed take Mandrax — as shown in the film. But it’s a dramatic leap to imagine her inventing a handsome interviewer.

“Drugs can cause visual hallucinations. But these hallucinations are not typically under a person’s control,” Wink explained. “They act on certain parts of the brain, but they’re not the parts of the brain that you control, so you don’t hallucinate things in a very orderly, rational way.”

Still, he doesn’t find the storytelling device objectionable, he said: “I think it’s a very reasonable poetic license.”

Volf’s documentary Maria by Callas tells her story in her own words, using never-before-seen primary sources including home movies, family photographs, private letters and unpublished memoirs.

Asked if he knew of any evidence that she saw apparitions of imaginary people, Volf replied: “None whatsoever. There is no doubt about this.”

He calls Maria “pure and utter fiction,” and says it “should be really contemplated as as a work of fiction.”

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He noted that he has a different intention than the Maria filmmakers, and that there is space for both approaches.

“I have dedicated 10 years of my life to bringing out to the public an authentic vision of who Callas was as a woman and as an artist through the work I’ve done, including my own film Maria by Callas,” he said. “So my personal interest is in accuracy and authenticity. But I have respect for others who get inspired by Callas to to do fiction. It’s fine. There is room for everything.”

Volf is the president of the Maria Callas Foundation, which gave the film access to its archives and is thanked in the Maria credits. He told MovieMaker he met with Larraín, was invited to visit the set, and received a consulting fee early in the project.

“When I was approached by the director, Pablo Larraín, it was made very clear to me that he had no intention of making something that I had already done, which was, you know, a documentary,” Volf added. “It was his own vision and ideas.”

Asked if Callas had any living relatives who might object to the film, he replied, “not really.”

He suggests that if people want to be entertained by a work of fiction, they may enjoy Maria. But if they want a true representation, they may enjoy a documentary about the opera singer.

“Or they could, as a matter of fact, watch both,” he laughed. “Why not?”

Main image: (L to R) Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas and Haluk Bilginer as Aristotle Onassis in Maria. Photo credit: Pablo Larraín/Netflix © 2024.