Pablo Larraín’s Maria, with Angelina Jolie because the famed opera singer Maria Callas, was music to the ears of the viewers seated inside Sala Grande on Thursday night time. The Venice Movie Pageant crowd responded to the world premiere with an electrical eight-minute standing ovation that noticed its star in tears at one level.

It’s been a busy week on the Maria entrance. On Wednesday, Netflix confirmed that it had acquired distribution rights to the movie. “I’m excited to associate once more with the Netflix staff who care so passionately about motion pictures,” the filmmaker mentioned in an announcement relating to the deal. “This movie is my most private work but. It’s a inventive imagining and psychological portrait of Maria Callas, who, after dedicating her life to performing for audiences all over the world, decides lastly to search out her personal voice, her personal id, and sing for herself.”

Jolie additionally made her first public statements on the undertaking throughout a press convention held Thursday afternoon forward of the screening. She apparently spent about seven months getting ready for the difficult position, work that discovered her coaching with opera singers and coaches to grasp the posture, respiration and motion of a singer of Callas’ caliber. Diving deep into opera supplied “remedy I didn’t understand I wanted,” she advised the press.

“I had no concept how a lot I used to be holding in and never letting out,” she continued. “So the problem wasn’t the technical, it was an emotional expertise to search out my voice, to be in my physique, to specific. It’s a must to give each single a part of your self.” Requested what a part of Callas she most associated to, Jolie mentioned, maybe surprisingly, it was “the a part of her that’s extraordinarily tender and doesn’t have room on the earth to be as tender as she really was — as emotionally open as she really was. I share her vulnerability greater than something.”

Primarily based on true accounts, Maria tells the tumultuous and tragic story of the lifetime of one of many world’s best opera singers throughout her ultimate days in Seventies Paris. The script was penned by Steven Knight. Jolie toplines a solid that additionally contains Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Valeria Golino. The producer roster contains Juan de Dios Larraín for Fabula, Jonas Dornbach for Komplizen Movie and Lorenzo Mieli for The Condo, a Fremantle firm.

Jolie’s look on the Venice Movie Pageant is a part of a wave of A-list expertise making the rounds on the Lido this yr in a serious return to Hollywood glitz and glamour. These with movies within the pageant embrace Jolie’s ex-husband Brad Pitt, in addition to stars like George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, Joaquin Phoenix, Woman Gaga and Jude Legislation.