Chilean director Pablo Larraín is known for helming biopics about complex and iconic women. In Jackie, he offered a fictionalized portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy in the aftermath of JFK's assassination, and he brought to life a fictionalized story of Princess Diana in Spencer. His latest film, Maria, centers on Maria Callas, an opera soprano, played by Angelina Jolie.
For his Treat, Larraín recounts childhood visits to the opera house with his mother where he saw Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly more than a dozen times. One piece, in particular, left a lasting impression on him, the "Humming Chorus." It plays during a poignant scene in the opera, where a Japanese woman, anxiously waiting for her American sailor lover to return, is comforted by the soothing voices of the local townspeople. Despite the tranquil and comforting melody, she still can’t sleep. Larraín argues that the piece is both beautiful and extremely unsettling at the same time.
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Thanks to my mom, I grew up going to the opera house back in Santiago in Chile, and my mom was specifically obsessed, and still is, with an opera named Madama Butterfly.
So I think, just with my mom, I've seen it over 10 or 12 times and there's a piece of music called the "Humming Chorus" – it's in the film we just did, and I think is one of the most moving pieces of music ever written by a man named Giacomo Puccini that died 100 years ago only. I said only because, in opera terms, that's nothing. That's yesterday.
What I like about that specific piece of music is that there's a moment of the character, which is this Japanese woman that was pregnant by an American sailor who leaves, and at some point, he leaves with the boy later in the story, and she's waiting for him to come back, so she can't sleep. So the people of the town come to sing for her so she can fall asleep. So it's a very tender, beautiful melody, "Humming Chorus." And the paradox is that, even with that music, she can't sleep either. So there's something beautiful, but also something unsettling to it.
If you were to put, just for everyone to understand, something like that music over Hannibal Lecter, it would be the scariest thing you ever heard and seen.
A voice is a physical thing that has an invisible frequency that we can not only listen to, but it could become something that we can physically feel with our bodies. It's not a joke that a singer can actually break a glass.