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Start Your Journal7 Deaths of Maria Callas (2020)
🌟Personal Reflection
I’m reflecting on this piece I witnessed a couple years ago, but emotions didn’t fade. I felt deep admiration for these two female artists dedication and involvement in art they perform, blurring the lines between art and life, and transcending beyond one’s life, making art ethereal and timeless. Slow moving, extended, so carefully modified or modernized death scenes from original opera’s scenes intensified the feelings ranging from dread, sadness, fear to physical pain sensations. But there was also so much joy, pride and gratefulness for the life itself and all we can and cannot control about it. Combining theater, performance and opera felt like a most beautiful art medium I’ve ever experience, so natural and limitless.
About This Artwork
Performace art opera blending film and live music to explore the tragic lives of opera's most famous heroines through the lens of Callas's own heartbreaking life. It features seven fatal arias, with Abramović starring in film segments and concluding with a representation of Callas's real-life death. Key Interpretations of the Work: A Fusion of Identities: Abramović merges her own artistic identity with Callas’s, highlighting shared themes of heartbreak, intense dedication to art, and suffering, suggesting a "spiritual" connection. Deconstructing the Diva's Death: The performance spotlights seven dramatic, fatal arias—Carmen, Tosca, Otello, Lucia di Lammermoor, Norma, Madama Butterfly, and La Traviata—reimagined with cinematic, sometimes violent, contemporary visuals. The Final Act (Eighth Death): The opera ends with Abramović in a recreated Paris apartment where Callas died, moving beyond the fictional staged deaths to focus on the private, isolated loneliness of Callas’s final days. Critique of Operatic Tropes: Abramović uses the piece to comment on the consistent, often unfair, theatrical trope of women dying for love in opera, viewing it as a "curse" or ritualized pain, as mentioned by. A Tribute to "La Divina": Despite some criticism that it focuses more on Abramović than the singer, it is generally considered an homage to Callas’s ability to completely immerse herself in tragic roles, notes.
- Artist
- Marina Abramovic
- Date experienced
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