‘Maria’ Production Designer on Re-creating the Opera Singer’s Lavish World

Sketched Out

Larraín and Dyas visited all of Callas’ favorite places in Paris, including her Avenue Georges Mandel apartment, which since has been renovated. After some pushback, its current owner allowed access to the unit but no photography, so Dyas drew the apartment and then made a sketch (below) of what Callas’ apartment would look like in the film, taking some creative liberty to allow for easier flow. “We didn’t really get a chance to see anything as it was, except maybe the fireplace. It was a shame,” Dyas says. 

Tuned to Fit

Callas’ grand piano was used as a storytelling device: Throughout the film, Callas tells her staff to move it to different parts of the apartment. Of course, a concert grand would not fit through a standard Parisian doorway, and Larraín did not want to build them wider because framing a shot would become more difficult. “Plus, it was very hard for these actors to push around this concert grand,” he says. So a real Steinway was placed in the apartment, but a hollow, narrower one was built to be moved by the actors.

Designed like a Fairy Tale

Callas’ bed was the first thing Dyas designed, based on a candid Polaroid shot that Bruna, Callas’ housemaid, had taken of her in bed. “Her bed was so crazy over-the-top. The headboard was about 8 feet high, full of Italian moldings, and it even had an original painting in the center of the Madonna holding a baby, which was very key for our story because one of our story points is how she’s told to not keep the baby by Aristotle Onassis.” The opening shot acted as a way for Dyas to turn “her bedroom into an opera stage.” He and his team built the bed on a set in Budapest, and Dyas hand-painted the Madonna, along with roses and the sky, onto the headboard that was carved, padded and embroidered. “I was desperate to make it oversized. It needed to feel like Princess and the Pea. That bed was a work of art,” he adds.

A Wall of Honor

There are famous shots of Callas sitting in her apartment in front of sketches of herself or the various certificates she received. “My team re-created that wall to perfection,” says Dyas. He also reconstructed those sketches of Callas but made them look more like Jolie. “Anyone who knows Maria would see that wall and say, ‘Oh my God, there’s the wall.’ ” It was important for him to serve Callas’ fans but also take viewers to spaces they’d never seen before. “We did crazy research,” he says.

The Bible

Below is Dyas’ famous script book, in which he records all of his thoughts and processes for a film. “It’s just pages and pages. For Maria, we did the same process. Very often, Pablo would say, ‘Where’s the script?!’ ” Below are also the sketches he made of Callas’ portraits for the wall noted above. Dyas is the only one on his team who can draw that way, so those sketches were his responsibility. His team also re-created a famous picture of Callas sitting in front of her fireplace.

Mirror Into Her Soul

Dyas calls the dressing room “the most interesting set” of the film. “This is where we got to deal with her most intimate self: when she’s sitting at that dressing table and nobody else is around, and she’s looking at herself.” Larraín and Dyas were tired of seeing vanities with naked bulbs in film, so they used can lights to adorn the rounded mirror instead. The vanity was positioned in front of a window for more of an operatic feel. The statues surrounding her are all damaged to reflect Callas’ “broken soul.” 

This story first appeared in a December stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.