I found this movie very disappointing for a number of reasons , few of which will probably interest the real Callas fan.
First, there is no outside narrator , no at least partially objective voice. What we get is truly just Callas' own words , mostly from filmed interviews and occasionally from her letters. (These occasional texts are read by Joyce Di Donato, a great singer in her own right but with a speaking voice that bears no resemblance to Callas's . That's rather off-putting , though I suppose it avoids confusion.) As a result , we get no objective commentary when Callas presents her own version of different episodes in her life. That makes this of little use as biography.
Second, we get a lot of unidentified or only partially identified footage, which is frustrating for anyone who is actuallly interested in learning something about Callas' life. As one example out of many: we see scenes from her late career tour with Giuseppe di Stefano, but we never hear what the critics had to say about it. (They were evidently both in bad voice.)
In short , this movie is only what the title states : Maria Callas as she wanted to be seen. For the Callas fan who has read a lot about her and knows what the issues were, I guess that's fine. But this movie would definitely make a very misleading introduction to the phenomenon that was Callas in the third quarter of the last century.
First, there is no outside narrator , no at least partially objective voice. What we get is truly just Callas' own words , mostly from filmed interviews and occasionally from her letters. (These occasional texts are read by Joyce Di Donato, a great singer in her own right but with a speaking voice that bears no resemblance to Callas's . That's rather off-putting , though I suppose it avoids confusion.) As a result , we get no objective commentary when Callas presents her own version of different episodes in her life. That makes this of little use as biography.
Second, we get a lot of unidentified or only partially identified footage, which is frustrating for anyone who is actuallly interested in learning something about Callas' life. As one example out of many: we see scenes from her late career tour with Giuseppe di Stefano, but we never hear what the critics had to say about it. (They were evidently both in bad voice.)
In short , this movie is only what the title states : Maria Callas as she wanted to be seen. For the Callas fan who has read a lot about her and knows what the issues were, I guess that's fine. But this movie would definitely make a very misleading introduction to the phenomenon that was Callas in the third quarter of the last century.