Maria Callas died on September 16, 1977 in her Paris apartment, 36 avenue Georges Mandel, third floor.
Alone.
He was 53 years old and heartbroken by the heartbreak of Aristotle Onassis.
The billionaire shipowner never proposed to the diva who found out from the press that her lover was marrying Jackie, Kennedy's widow ...
Marina Abramovic (Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts) lies on the stage of the Palais Garnier, in a setting identical to the bedroom at La Callas.
A blast of air shakes the curtains, the artist gets out of bed, contemplates the photos of her relatives, takes something from the table (barbiturates, in real life) and breaks a vase of flowers.
"I admit that I was angry with the interviews in the film
María by Callas
.
Her submission to the man is flagrant. She
says that if Onassis had married her and they had had a child together, she would have abandoned singing. She was that type of woman" says the artist Serbia on the show.
Parallels of two lives that begin in the grandmother's kitchen, in Belgrade where, at the age of 14, Abramovic hears Callas's voice on an old radio.
"
Standing, with my eyes closed, I burst into tears. The announcer said his name and my passion began
."
At 74, without ever having seen her on stage, the passion takes shape in a beautiful, dramatic and modern tribute
:
7 Deaths of Maria Callas
in which many other sopranos sing the arias of
La Traviata
,
Tosca
,
Otello
,
Madame Butterfly,
Carmen
,
Lucia de Lammermoor
and
Norma.
"Addio, del passato bei sogni ridenti. Le rose del volto già son pallenti ..." (
Goodbye, beautiful smiling dreams of the past. The roses on my face are now
turning
pale
...) Hera Hyesang Park sings as Violetta Valéry, a character from
the Traviata
that La Callas gave life to 17 times, in 1956 alone, at La Scala.
The scene is ushered in by a reclining image of Abramovic (Violetta dies of tuberculosis) with a heartbroken Willem Dafoe.
The pattern continues with Tosca / Abramovic, falling into the void from a skyscraper;
Desdemona strangled by Othello, with the help of two snakes brought by the evil Dafoe with a terrified face;
Madame Butterfly abandoned on a planet without oxygen;
Carmen, all in red and rhinestones, stabbed by the male Dafoe;
Lucia with a bloody face and Norma, on the way to the fire.
Visually striking.
Gore, at times.
Overwhelming
.
Great contrast to the music and the voices of the singers. subtle and beautiful
, uniformed as servants due to the demands of the script.
(They clean the room where Callas / Abramovic dies).
Maria Callas sang the aria from
Madame Butterfly
at age 11 but only played the role once.
And
Carmen's
habanera
on the boat that took him from his native New York to Greece at 13 (in 1937).
And
Tosca
in a summer theater in Athens in 1942. She was never Desdemona or Carmen on stage, although she did take part in recordings of both.
Lucia and Norma were stellar roles in her career.
They all have in common, the on-stage sacrifice of heroine because in the 19th century, unlike the previous "happy ends" by Gluck and Mozart, "
opera meant the defeat of women
", the accurate title of an essay by Catherine Clément They claim their freedom to love, like Carmen, and die.
"
Maria Callas was a diva, the greatest on stage. And, at the same time, fragile, sensitive, melancholic and sad. It
also unites us that she was heartbroken. I was very much in love and when that relationship ended I couldn't eat, neither breathe, nor sleep. In my case, my work saved me "Abramovic told
France Inter
.
Sagittarians, both conflictive daughters of tough mothers, the Serbian performer has updated the myth.
In a context of female empowerment.
Taking refuge in ... Gandhi.
"He said something that illustrates the life of struggles, sadness and also victory that I share with Maria Callas: '
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and finally you win
."
Six minutes of applause from a masked audience that filled the room
, after checking the health pass, responded to the greeting of sopranos, directors and a satisfied golden Abramovic.
The ashes of Maria Callas were deposited in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
The urn that contained them was stolen and recovered shortly.
Then they were scattered across the Aegean Sea.
His followers ensured that the niche of the Parisian necropolis was not reused even if it is empty.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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