La Scala

The 82-year-old has served as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin State Opera and La Scala in Milan, but is equally well known for his efforts to promote peace through music in the Middle East.

The actor could bring her own preternatural poise, and she could wear sumptuous costumes in extravagant settings — even on the stage of La Scala in Milan.

And in those moments when Jolie might have felt that anxiety most acutely — say, re-creating Callas’ performance of “Piangete voi?” from Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena” on the stage of La Scala in front of hundreds of extras and opera house staffers — she could tell herself she was simply singing to her director, who was often just a few feet away from her, operating his own camera.

If opera still commands audiences a century from now, perhaps it will sing of Callas, a fighter who survived the Nazi occupation of Greece, a heckling at La Scala, a media hazing on multiple continents and a humiliating public affair only to be hobbled by her own coping tools: sedatives and starvation.

“And we ended at La Scala with everyone. So I had a little time to get my nerve. But this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was terrified.”