In Marina Abramović’s multilayered work for the Bavarian State Opera, the performance artist inserts herself into the stories of operatic icons; in a streamed recital as part of a series from the Met, the singer offered expressive renditions of Monteverdi, Mahler and more.
By Heidi Waleson
Sept. 15, 2020 5:05 pm ET
The premiere of Marina Abramović’s “The 7 Deaths of Maria Callas,” which opened the Bavarian State Opera’s season this month, was live-streamed on Sept. 5 and is available free of charge until Oct. 7. Though in development for several years, it seems made for this pandemic moment—it runs an intermission-free 90 minutes, and only one person sings onstage at a time. Rather than an opera, it’s an appropriation and an appreciation of the form. The Serbian-born performance artist inserts herself into the stories of some operatic icons—the soprano Maria Callas and seven famous heroines—and fashions a multilayered meditation on dying for love. Opera fans steeped in the tragedies of Violetta, Cio-Cio-San and their ilk, as well as the doomed Callas-Aristotle Onassis romance, will get the references as Ms. Abramović represents all of these women but chiefly herself.
In the diverting first hour, Ms. Abramović, as Callas, lies motionless in a bed at stage right, presumably dreaming her stage deaths as she awaits her own. (Marko Nikodijević composed the spacey interstitial music.) One by one, seven sopranos enter and sing famous Callas arias, starting with “Addio del passato” (“La Traviata”) and concluding with “Casta diva” (“Norma”). Each is introduced by a voiceover, spoken in English by Ms. Abramović, giving emotional context, and accompanied by a film, directed by Nabil Elderkin and starring Ms. Abramović and the actor Willem Dafoe as the lover who causes her death.
The arias are eloquently sung, but the giant film images seize our focus and, together with the introductory narrations, make the deaths explicit. In the “Traviata” sequence, Ms. Abramović expires in bed; the other six grow progressively more violent and grotesque. In “Ave Maria” (“Otello”), she is strangled by a giant snake; in “Un bel di” (“Madama Butterfly”), she rips off her hazmat suit in a poisoned landscape and breathes in the air; for “Il dolce suono,” from the mad scene in “Lucia di Lammermoor,” she slashes herself with broken glass. Puzzlingly, in “Casta diva,” it is Mr. Dafoe who wears the signature Callas makeup (skinny eyebrows, red lipstick) and a gold lamé gown; he and Ms. Abramović, in a tuxedo, stagger into a fire, their facial expressions simultaneously agonized and ecstatic. (The narration cites bubbling and blackening skin and singed lungs.) Dying for love, it seems, is actually a lot more painful than the exquisite music of Verdi and Bellini suggests.
The concluding half hour, lacking the arias and films, is tamer and duller. The bed is now part of a set, depicting the Paris bedroom where Callas died in 1977; Ms. Abramović’s voiceover narration and Mr. Nikodijević’s music take Ms. Abramović/Callas from semi-consciousness (“Breathe”) to a wander around the room, a glance through a pile of photographs, a smashed vase, and finally out a door. The sopranos reappear—their identical, demure outfits now explained as maids’ uniforms (the costumes are by Riccardo Tisci)—to tidy up and drape the room in crepe. One drops a stylus onto a turntable; the room disappears behind a scrim; and Ms. Abramović reappears downstage, in gold lamé, gesticulating along to Callas’s voice singing “Casta diva.” The line between homage and usurpation is a fine one; no doubt some Callas devotees will assume the latter and be offended.
Hera Hyesang Park emphasized Violetta’s fragilty in “Addio del passato” and vulnerability; Selene Zanetti made Tosca’s pleading in “Vissi d’arte” a poignant contrast to the oddly serene film of Ms. Abramović falling in slow motion from a tall building. Leah Hawkins exuded resignation in the “Ave Maria” (“Desdemona knew. She was ready”). Kiandra Howarth was a powerful Cio-Cio-San in “Un bel di”; Nadezhda Karyazina, a seductive Carmen in the “Habanera.” Adela Zaharia brought sparkling coloratura to Lucia, and Lauren Fagan was a solid Norma. Conductor Yoel Gamzou ably welded the arias and Mr. Nikodijević’s music into a coherent whole.
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Joyce DiDonato’s performance, live-streamed on Saturday and available on demand through Sept. 25 for $20, was the most imaginative and personal of the Met Stars Live in Concert series so far. It was staged in the Jarhunderthalle, a soaring Art Nouveau industrial building in Bochum, Germany. Ms. DiDonato, barefoot and dressed in a silky black trouser ensemble, sang from a raised circular platform, artfully surrounded by spherical clay sculptures by the Mexican artist Bosco Sodi; lighting diffused through the cavernous space changed color along with the program’s mood. Her sensitive collaborators, the period-instrument chamber ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro for the Baroque repertoire and pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson for the rest, were placed adjacent to the stage, at opposite poles, allowing for multiple camera angles.
Ms. DiDonato, vocally resplendent and expressive throughout, turned the 90-minute show into theater. Her first group was a powerful evocation of loss—a heartbroken “Addio, Roma” from Monteverdi’s “L’incoronazione di Poppea” was followed by a fierce rendition of Didon’s final scene from Berlioz’s “Les Troyens.” She finished the Berlioz on her knees, leaning against one of the sculptures, and segued right into an introspective Mahler song, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.” The bleak light warmed up for her second group, about the consolations of nature: “Oh Shenandoah,” sung a capella, was followed by a magical “As with rosy steps the morn” from Handel’s “Theodora,” more Monteverdi, and a joyous “Dopo notte atra e funesta” from Handel’s “Ariodante,” displaying Ms. DiDonato’s formidable command of Baroque ornamentation.
In a pre-recorded Zoom call, the mezzo chatted with Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote about her crusade against the death penalty in “Dead Man Walking” (Ms. DiDonato played her in the operatic version), and the formerly incarcerated composer Kenyatta Hughes, whose bluesy, sweet “I Dream a World” then got its world premiere. Mozart’s “Voi che sapete” rubbed shoulders with Louiguy’s “La vie en rose.” Addressing the virtual audience, Ms. DiDonato talked about grief in the face of the pandemic and her belief that love is the answer; her final selection, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” ending with the camera close up on her face, felt like a gift and a promise.
—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).
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