Culture
Abramovic’s Maria Callas opera
Abramovic on the stage of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.
Image courtesy of: The New York Times, photographed by: Wilfried Hösl
The 73-year-old Maria Abramovic has done some crazy things during her decades-long career. She laid within a gas-soaked pentagram and set it on fire. She sat in absolute stillness and silence at New York City’s MOMA for six days a week for months on end. And she walked more than 1,000 miles along the Great Wall of China.
It is unimaginable that this unstoppable artist was stopped by a pandemic… just as she was about to premiere an opera about Maria Callas. Since she first heard Callas sing in what was her grandmother’s kitchen in Yugoslavia at the age of fourteen, Abramovic has been obsessed with the opera star.
The cover of Abramovic’s opera program, “7 Deaths of Maria Callas.”
Image courtesy of: Bureau Borsche
The opera is an ode to the Callas, to whom Abramovic finds many similarities to. Abramovic said, “I was mesmerized and I had goose pimples, and total electricity in my body. Later on, I knew everything about her. I read eight biographies, all of them, and there was so much similarity that I see in myself. We are Sagittarius, the same; we had bad mothers. And then, also, this incredible intensity in the emotions, that she can be fragile, and strong at the same time.”
So it was a natural, albeit difficult, progression for Abramovic to choose to get involved with and to direct a music-theater work that is based on the tragic experiences that surround the American-born, Greek soprano. The opera performs a medley of Callas’ greatest arias; each one of which is accompanied by a short film in which Abramovic plays opposite the famous Hollywood actor, Willem Dafoe.
Dafoe and Abramovic in one of the short films that accompany the opera’s seven arias.
Image courtesy of: The New York Times, photographed by: Marco Anelli
Abramovic selected the arias and worked with music-video director Nabil Elderkin to develop the short films that play onstage as singers perform live.
In six of the arias, Dafoe plays Abramovic’s lover or assassin… and in each of them, she dies. In one video, Abramovic is strangled by a python as music from “Ave Maria” plays in the background. In another video, Dafoe stabs Abramovic in coordination to music from “Carmen.”
Maria Callas.
Image courtesy of: The National Herald
Callas had a troubled and tumultuous relationship with her audiences, the press, and impresarios. She was hounded for her weight and she eventually lost her sensitive voice. Callas’ affair with Aristotle Onassis shattered her heart… and some say, caused her to die. The two met while Callas was married to an Italian businessman, Giovanni Battista Meneghini. The relationship was pursued by the press as it turned into a much-publicized love triangle with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. When Aristotle Onasiss died, Callas became a recluse in her Paris apartment.
Similarly, Abramovic suffered terribly when her husband, Pablo Canevari walked out on their marriage ten years ago. She says, “I stopped eating. I stopped drinking. I didn’t want to live anymore. I was in a very bad state, for a long time.” However unlike Callas, Abramovic turned to her work for solace.
Abramovic in a scene of the opera.
Image courtesy of: Bureau Borsche
“The 7 Deaths of Maria Callas” is just another casualty of Covid-19. Scheduled to open in Munich on April 11th, the opera must wait for the world to normalize some. Abramovic however pressed forward even as Germany remained on lockdown. Since the Munich opera company is state-run, rehearsals were allowed to continue even as most private employees were told to stay at home.
The last scene is one in which Abramovic channels Callas in her bedroom. It portrays a sad, yet vital scene in Callas’ story. On April 1st, when the company officially postponed the opening, Abramovic said, “I was hoping that angels will help us. Every day more and more. But it’s impossible.”
Hopefully, the angels will help Abramovic, her opera, and us all very soon!
