Maria Callas’ immense artistic greatness extends far beyond her voice alone. This has been confirmed by anyone who was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to hear and see her at the theatre. We can appreciate it ourselves today, as we perceive the luminous reflections of a legend that never fades. Yet the myth of Maria Callas cannot be separated from her voice. And it is that voice that the restoration of Medea returns to us: a mythological figure in her own right, Medea was often interpreted by Maria Callas in the opera by Luigi Cherubini. In the film, like in the opera, Maria Callas is Medea’s body and soul, she lives, she is illuded, she suffers, she even carries out the most horrid of homicides. But she does not sing. She speaks. And now, this restoration will allow us to hear Maria Callas’ real voice, in the performance she gave for Pasolini in Italian. The film was initially released with the voice of Rita Savagnone: the producer Franco Rossellini pressured the director to dub Callas for the Italian theatre circuit, fearing that her “foreign” accent would bother audiences. Pasolini acquiesced, but insisted and obtained that the soprano’s original voice be retained for the editions released abroad: a voice whose intensity Pasolini used sparingly in a film that sustains with very few words the immense silent spaces of Cappadocia, of History and of its roots in Myth.
DIRECTOR: Pier Paolo Pasolini
NATION: Italy, France, West Germany
YEAR: 1969
RUNTIME: 118′
CAST: Maria Callas, Massimo Girotti, Laurent Terzieff, Giuseppe Gentile, Margareth Clémenti, Paul Jabara