Two powerful women: extreme, unique, and with a strong character are united on stage at the Bayerische Staatsoer in Munich, 43 years from the death of Maria Callas. What do they have in common? Both women have merged their private lives with their public image creating a complete and comprehensive work of art.
During the performance the artist retraces the seven deaths which Callas portrayed throughout her career as a soprano: Tosca, Carmen, Violetta (La Traviata), Cho Cho-San (Madam Butterfly), Lucia (of Lammermoor), Norma and Desdemona (Othello). What binds all these women together is their tragic destiny: they all died for love. Marina Abramovic creates a dialogue between their tragic endings and the private life of the singer, who on many occasions suffered at the hands of negative criticism.
Each of these women is presented as a symbol of passion and tormented love. Each woman suffered because of a man and died of a broken heart.
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All the set designs have been curated by the artist. She also selected Marko Nikodijevic as musical composer and Riccardo Tisci (managing director of Maison Burberry) for costume design. On stage with her is also another great actor, Willem Defoe, portraying the assassin who murders the women played by Abramovic (in real life, Maria Callas had said it was Aristoteles Onannis).
Abramovic first came into contact with the artist Maria Callas in the 1970s, when she started to collect information on both her artistic career as well as her private life. Right from the start she felt a strong bond. In 2014 she started to create this performance, but due to budget issues as well as defection from some of the directors (she had planned to have a different director for each woman), the project was stalled, until now.
In her autobiography ‘Walk Through Walls’, Abramovic writes, “For 25 years I have wanted to create a work dedicated to the life and art of Maria Callas. I have read all the biographies written about her, listened to all her work and watched all the recordings of her exhibitions. Like me, she was a Sagittarius. I have always been fascinated by her personality, by her life and by her death. Like many of the characters she portrayed on the stage, she died for love. She died of a broken heart.”
Information
September 5th the performance will be available from 18:30 at the following link: www.staatsoper.de/tv.html?no_cache=1
If you miss it, the website will continue to show it for a month from the 7th of September.
Translated by Ludovica Sarti
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