Nearly half a century after her quiet death in a Paris apartment, Maria Callas continues to exert a hold on our imagination. Her interpretations of the canon are impossible to escape; her legend has — so far — proved impossible to eclipse.
Callas managed to achieve a cultural reach far surpassing what one might expect of an opera star in the 20th century. And now, with the release of “Maria,” a new biopic starring Angelina Jolie that imagines the final seven days of the diva’s life, the singer is poised to ensnare a new generation of adherents and admirers.
But her power extends well beyond her voice. From her au courant hairstyles to her haute couture fashions, from her flashing eyes to her grasping hands, these are the visual cues that, taken together, helped establish Callas as the cultural icon she remains today.
Her Hair
‘A Lot of Her Look’
“When those ladies left the house, they were done!” Adruitha Lee, the Oscar-winning hairstylist behind Angelina Jolie’s look in “Maria,” said recently by phone.
Ms. Lee was thinking less of great 20th-century opera stars than of her aunts in 1960s Alabama — characters who in key ways were an inspiration to her in creating the perfected public surfaces required of all women at one time, not just a diva assoluta. “Even if they went to the grocery store, they were done,” Ms. Lee said, referring to a particular aunt who maintained a collection of “cluster curl” hairpieces called switches, copies of which she used to recreate the architectonic coiffures Callas was famous for.
