Athens (AFP)

During her lifetime, Maria Callas regretted being "at the center of countless gossip".

44 years after her death, the diva comes back to life for a week in the Athens of her adolescence to "clarify" on stage her life and her "seven deaths", through two contemporary stars.

"I was born in New York, under the sign of the Sagittarius", declaims Monica Bellucci, wearing an authentic black dress by Maria Callas.

On the stage of the ancient theater Herodes Atticus in Athens, the Italian actress "enters the soul" of the Greek singer, reciting the "Letters and Memories" of the diva.

"Sagittarius like" the Callas, the performer Marina Abramovic, "fascinated by the personality, the life and even the death" of the famous soprano, "wanted to replay" at the Greek National Opera, "seven deaths" that the tragedian had lived on stage before her.

Because "like many of the opera heroines she created on stage, she too died of love. She died of a broken heart," the Serbian artist told AFP.

La Callas considered Greece to be the source of her extraordinary rise in lyrical singing, which she trained at the age of 13 at the National Conservatory in Athens.

Serbian performer Marina Abramovic in "Seven Dead by Maria Callas" at the Greek National Opera, September 23, 2021 in Athens ARIS MESSINIS AFP

It was in Greece, where the cosmopolitan virtuoso lived for ten years with her mother, after the separation of her Greek parents, that she interpreted some of her great roles from La Traviata by Verdi, to Madame Butterfly by Puccini, including Marina Abramovic scripted the tragic endings at the Opera.

"I was declared to the civil status Sophia Kalogeropoulou. My mother did not allow me to quote him for more than 5 minutes in front of a mirror, I had to work, I could not waste my time with nonsense, she said", whispers Monica Bellucci while reading in French the touching intimate letters set by Tom Volf.

Maria Callas performs "Norma" by Vincenzo Bellini, May 23, 1964 in Paris - AFP / Archives

"The letters are so beautiful (...) it was impossible not to enter the soul of this wonderful artist," Monica Bellucci told the press, shortly before the show played for the first time this week in Athens.

- "Proud and fighter" -

La Callas wrote that it "saw the light of day in New York on the morning of December 2 or 4".

"My passport indicates that I was born on the 2nd while my mother maintains that she gave birth to me on the 4th, I prefer December 4th (...) because it is the day of Saint Barbara, a proud saint and combative ".

From the diva's childhood in New York to her years in Greece, of which she took nationality in 1966, from the first steps of her career to her marriage and her tragic love affair with the Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis, Monica Bellucci emotionally interprets the memories of the international icon.

Italian actress Monica Belluci plays Maria Callas in "Letters and Memories" at the Herodes Atticus ancient theater in Athens, September 21, 2021 LOUISA GOULIAMAKI AFP

From Greece, its true self-proclaimed homeland, the Callas "remembers the winter of 1941, Greece invaded by the Germans and for several months the population reduced to starvation", reports the actress.

"Anyone who has never known the misery of occupation and hunger cannot know what freedom means", wrote the singer, who died of a heart attack at the age of 53 in Paris.

- Greek tragedy -

In her reconstructed Parisian apartment in Athens, the Callas resuscitated by Marina Abramovic dies, sighing: "Ari, c'est moi", in reference to Aristotle Onassis, who died before her.

"I was 14 when I heard her on the radio in my grandmother's kitchen; I cried so much I was touched by the beauty of her voice", told AFP in August. popess of performative art with long black hair.

Serbian performer Marina Abramovic in "Seven Dead by Maria Callas" at the Greek National Opera, September 23, 2021 in Athens ARIS MESSINIS AFP

In "The Seven Dead by Maria Callas", the performer invites seven sopranos to sing the famous arias of the diva while, on a screen behind the stage, she reinvents, with audacity and modernity, "the death" of the heroines opera, from Tosca, who plunges into the void, to Carmen stabbed, that the Callas had embodied.

Like a Greek tragedy.

© 2021 AFP