"Jolie signed up to the film knowing she would actually have to learn how to sing opera...."

"'I was terribly nervous,” she said... 'I spent almost seven months training....' [Director Pablo Larraín knew the actress could capture Callas’s magnetic presence and relate to the pressures the singer felt around her fame, but he strenuously did not want this to be a lip-syncing job. He planned on shooting close-ups of Jolie as Callas and felt it would immediately feel inauthentic to the audience if his lead actress didn’t know the sensation of singing opera, even if the sounds used in the film aren’t entirely her own.... [Jolie] listened endlessly to tapes of Callas teaching others how to sing opera... What we hear in the film are tracks mixing Jolie and Callas. The moments of Callas in her prime are mostly Callas with a fragment of Jolie — and then at other, more raw points, particularly as her voice degrades, it’s more Jolie...."

From "Angelina Jolie soars into the Oscar race with Venice film ‘Maria’/Jolie, who’s been locked in a legal battle with ex Brad Pitt, called the role of legendary opera singer Maria Callas 'therapy I didn’t know I needed'" (WaPo).

A quote from Jolie: "I think when your life is full, when you’ve felt a certain level of despair, of pain, of love, at a certain point, there [are] only certain sounds that can match that feeling. And to me, the immensity of the feeling encapsulated within the sounds of opera, there’s nothing like it, … It is the only sound that would explain that pain."

A very special selection of TikTok videos for you today. Let me know what you like.

1. Bob Dylan sings "Happy Birthday" to Brian Wilson! (Wilson turns 80 today. Dylan preceded him in octogenarianism by 1 year, so he knows whereof he sings. Perhaps I should also mention that Paul McCartney turned 80 two days ago. Let us marvel at the greatness of octogenarian men! Thanks for hanging on all these years, o, fabulous heroes!)

2. Pieface. Not a pie in the face. A pie face.

3. One lady crosses the street in the flood, so shouldn't the second lady?

4. How you pass someone on a hiking trail compared to how your dad does.

5. "If European Americans were the cultural other: Performative Holiday Merch Edition."

6. The Italian husband is told "Use your noodle."

7. The way Mike Wallace spoke to Maria Callas in 1974.

8. Do you mean to tell me there are people who use washcloths?

9. The way department stores talk to each other.

"Nothing could be less representative of Maria Callas, as no opera singer, not even a second-grade student at music school, would ever adopt such a pose with crossed arms in front of their chest."

"Opera is about singing and … freeing up the voice. If Callas were to try singing, in real life, in the stance conceived by the sculptor, the result would be like a violinist trying to play on a broken violin."

Said one former opera singer, quoted in "Gandhi in heels? Maria Callas statue hits the wrong note/Critics compare figure of famous soprano erected in Greek capital to an Oscar statuette" (The Guardian).