Review: Marina Abramovic Calls Maria Callas in ‘The 7 Deaths’


MUNICH — The husband and wife, played by Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, are described in reversed terms in Leos Carax’s new film “Annette.” As a comedian he kills every night; dies as an opera star.

This is of course a reductive look at opera. But the alignment of art form and death persists and guides in the popular imagination. “The 7 Deaths of Maria Callas.” A dramaturgically misguided session of a project by performance artist Marina Abramovic played out to its largest in-person audience at the Bavarian State Opera on Tuesday, after a heavily restricted run and live broadcast last year. bound for it Paris and Athens then in september Berlin and Naples – and who knows where else Abramovich is famous behind it.

“7 Deaths” is a diva reunion where Callas is summoned through a series of arias for which she is notable. He then appears on stage and in short films – an invocation of a spirit that, Abramovich claims, is still with us.

He is right. callas died in 1977, it’s still a strong album, though, alive in the artbook stream and yes hologram concerts. He was known as tabloid fodder even by the public beyond opera, especially because of his relationship with Aristotle Onassis – a love triangle involving his eventual wife, Jacqueline Kennedy. But his pop fame came from being an indelible artist who, with an impressive stage presence, contributed to the 20th century resurgence of the bel canto repertoire. Even when he was silent, his face was fully expressing his emotions, expressing it impressively with just a small gesture. Her voice disappointed her too soon, but she embodied the aria “Tosca”. “Vissi d’arte”: “I lived for art.”

The sound caught the attention of a young Abramovich, who said he first heard Callas on the radio in Yugoslavia when he was 14 years old. She’s been haunted by their similarities ever since: They share astrology signs, toxic relationships with their mothers, and told The New York Times last year“This incredible intensity of emotions can be both fragile and powerful at the same time.”

In this interview, Abramovich pointed out a fundamental difference: how their life reacted to losing their love. Callas, in her opinion, died of a broken heart – a heart attack to be exact – but was so shattered that she stopped eating and drinking, eventually surviving by returning to work.

All this background on “7 Deaths” is clearer than in the piece itself, where Callas was never found enough to convincingly intertwine with Abramovic, who turned the big diva’s stage upside down. This is the insurmountable flaw of the project and the main reason why it does not belong to an opera house.

The “7 Deaths” are best experienced face-to-face; The spatial sound design and immersive, big-screen movie element made the 95-minute runtime a breeze Tuesday compared to last year’s boring livestream. But his use of live performers reduces them to mere soundtracks and also erases Callas from his own history.

This could have been more satisfying as a series of video installations. Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto”. Had Abramovich’s homage accompanied by Callas’ narrative recordings, the goal of joining and blurring the divas could have been achieved more naturally. Instead, “7 Deaths,” which Abramovic co-directed with Lynsey Peisinger, followed by arias and real drama within films, never came close to a dreamy re-creation of Callas’ final moments in his Paris apartment.

The piece features expertly directed new music by Marko Nikodijevic, along with opera excerpts by Yoel Gamzou. The overture begins with haunting bells and slick melodies whose glissandos make them distant memories of irreplaceable tunes. Behind a cloth, Abramovic lies motionless on a bed in soft light; immortality Since Tilda Swinton There is an artist who escapes sleep so easily as a performance.

Then the swirling clouds are projected onto the scrim—a sticky, repetitive “visual intermezzo” as the titles call it—and a maid walks in. She is the first of seven singers who dress alike and whose arias follow introductions in the form of poetic texts pre-recorded by Abramovic.

The characters are never named, but opera fans will recognize them instantly: Violetta Valéry from “La Traviata” (Emily Pogorelc); Desdemona (Leah Hawkins) from “Hotel”; Cio-Cio-San from “Madama Butterfly” (Kiandra Howarth); and the protagonists of “Tosca” (Selene Zanetti), “Carmen” (Samantha Hankey), “Lucia di Lammermoor” (Rosa Feola) and “Norma” (Lauren Fagan).

Feola’s Lucia was defiantly there, a performance that even strayed from its dramatic context, capturing the emotional power and vocal acrobatics of the role, though their appearance on the stage is an insult to the singers, who feel like an interchangeably anonymous musical accompaniment in the short films.

Sleeping remains the center of attention throughout Abramovic, just as the short films starring him and Willem Dafoe and directed by Nabil Elderkin do not reflect Callas as behind him, but the arias themselves (at a superficial level) and the arias (at a superficial level). the more thoughtful one) the nature of operatic art.

Embracing extremism, these videos flirt with winking camp. Inspired by “Tosca,” Abramovic falls from a skyscraper in slow motion, while her giant earrings dance in zero gravity; When Dafoe, like Desdemona, wraps thick snakes around her neck to strangle her, their slippery bodies smear her lipstick. While Carmen is a glamorous matador, in “Norma” she and Dafoe swap gender roles in a sparkly dress and Marlene Dietrich’s pencil-drawn eyebrows.

Little is said about Callas here, but after the seventh aria, Nikodijevic’s music returns – now booming and turbulent, singers and instrumentalists perched in the theatre’s boxes – as the scene changes on the day of his death. Realistic but evocative of a place beyond, the window does not open to a street view, but to a pale blue void.

In this long coda, Abramovic’s pre-recorded voice both guides him through the moves on stage and imagines Callas’ final thoughts in an extraordinary collage that resembles a crazy scene. Luxury bedding “Ari” Onassis reflects on his gay friends (Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Zeffirelli, Leonard Bernstein). Then, at some point, it comes out of a door. Servants come in, clean the room impartially, and cover the furniture with black fabrics.

One of them lingers, opens a turntable and drops the needle on the record. “Casta Diva.” The sound is scratchy but distinct: Callas, for the first time. Abramovic returns to the stage in a shimmering gold dress and mimics the performance – an outstretched hand, a sad look. The two divas finally reunite, it’s too late.

7 Deaths of Maria Callas

It was staged at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich on Tuesday.



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