:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/TAL-header-exterior-la-divina-athens-greece-JOLIEGRECEHTL1224-78cdb51d80fc45059fb3119ec75951dd.jpg)
“Maria,” the Angelina Jolie magical-realist biopic imagining Maria Callas’s final days, takes place nearly solely in Paris, save for some black-and-white flashbacks to the diva’s impoverished youth in Nazi-occupied Athens. (There are additionally just a few reminiscences of her performances on world phases, plus a few Tremendous-8 type flickering scenes of dreamy instances spent on her lover Aristotle Onassis’s yacht, the Christina O.)
However whereas the movie, streaming now on Netflix, is making this a Callas second worldwide, the town of Athens has been celebrating the diva since her rise to fame within the late Forties. It’s straightforward to really feel Callas’s spirit within the Greek capital, which is as resilient and dramatic because the star herself.
Courtesy of La Divina
Within the period of movie and tv–impressed journey, “Maria” might need you plotting a Parisian escape, however I would foyer for a Greek getaway as an alternative. This summer season, I stayed at a Callas-inspired boutique lodge in Athens. I’ve by no means felt extra like a diva than I did sitting within the scorching tub on the balcony of my suite at La Divina, sipping wine and gazing up on the illuminated Acropolis. The lodge, which opened in April 2024, was constructed round 1897 and served as the house to a collection of rich households till it was seized by the Italian military to be used as a barracks throughout World Struggle II. It then grew to become a zipper manufacturing unit and was finally deserted. In 1996, the Worldwide Artwork Middle Atheneum turned the constructing right into a conservatory known as the Odeon Atheneum, which grew to become the positioning of the Worldwide Grand Prix de Maria Callas competitors. Devoted to the opera legend, the Odeon displayed a bust of Callas within the live performance corridor.
As we speak, the neoclassical landmark has been restored right into a boutique lodge with 12 suites, every named for an opera Callas as soon as carried out. (My husband and I stayed in Macbeth; our youngsters have been in La Bohème.) Callas’s arias crammed the halls in encompass sound, and in our rooms, La Divina chocolate bars impressed by her performances showcased a Callas portrait on the outer field, and a historical past of the well-known present on its inside.
LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/Getty Photographs
From the lodge, it was a 13-minute stroll down pedestrian streets previous the Theseion temple and the Roman discussion board to the Maria Callas Museum, an intimate, immersive homage to Callas. The highest flooring recreates moments from Callas’s best-loved operas, inviting the customer to sit down in a forest grove listening to “Norma,” the Druid princess sing; step into the Palazzo Farnese to listen to “Tosca” plead with the nefarious Baron Scarpia for her lover’s life; go to a French salon to listen to the courtesan Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata”; and attend a grasp class led by Callas on the Julliard College in New York. The ground beneath comprises Callas’s attire, her jewellery, her correspondence, and a number of other screens and earphones, so you may take heed to her dodge intrusive questions in televised interviews. However my favourite second might need been within the courtyard outdoors the museum, in entrance of Athens’ cathedral, the place the museum was internet hosting a number of little youngsters coloring within the diva’s portrait.
Courtesy of La Divina
Callas’s face just isn’t arduous to search out in Athens; she rises in a mural above the elevator within the Megaro Mousikis metro station, and there’s a bronze statue of her in Roberto Galli park, not removed from the Acropolis. Her expertise permeates the town even additional; an exhibit of her belongings graces the Maria Callas Cultural House within the Olympia Municipal Music Theatre Maria Callas, the place she made her operatic debut in 1944. And devotees can attend performances of all types within the 2nd-century Odeon of Herodes Atticus, on the foot of the Acropolis, the place Callas sang in 1944, and once more, as a part of the Athens Pageant, in 1957.
Whereas Callas was born in New York, and solely lived in Athens from the ages of 13 to 21 earlier than returning to the USA, Greece launched her profession — making Athens the right vacation spot for a “Maria”-inspired journey.
