In homage, renowned performance artist Marina Abramović (the first woman to have a retrospective at the Royal Academy), in her ENO debut, takes on the mantle of opera legend Maria Callas in the centenary year of Callas’s birth. Marina Abramović is Maria Callas in a clever and highly stylised, expensive production that melds the arts. Credits are many, tonight’s starry press night audience representing many names from across the range.
Though she has many admirers, Abramović can be an acquired taste. Not all are won over (I’m eavesdropping). First the plus: the concept is a good one. Seven arias from seven operas by Bellini, Bizet, Donizetti, Puccini and Verdi that made Callas’s name deal with the death of women badly served by men... How life mimics art and vice-versa.
Aged fourteen, Marina fell in love with Maria and saw similarities in their histories, domineering mothers and so on. Physical punishment was also the norm in her early years. Is this need to self-harm, to endure, in her performance art attention seeking exhibitionism, narcissism, or a psychological dealing with demons? 7 Deaths of Maria Callas feels like an egotistical summation of both their careers.
Taking Callas as her alter ego, Abramović is present on stage throughout, a sleeping figure in a bed at the side. Is Callas reliving the arias in her mind as she lies dying—the eighth and final death? Above her, giant stormy clouds gather. The video work by Marco Brambilla (“designer of video intermezzos”) is dramatic and reminds me of John Martin’s early nineteenth century apocalyptic paintings.
As the six sopranos and one mezzo sing the litany of her life, huge video film projections illustrate the sung scenarios. Nabil Elderkin is the film director and the larger than life actors are Abramović and Willem Dafoe. The effect is to dwarf and diminish the singers, who are truly wonderful, but, all dressed identically in maid’s uniform, they are barely visible against the cinematic action. Genet’s The Maids fleetingly and erroneously crosses my mind.
If the intent is to celebrate Callas’s singing, opera the essence of her life, averting the eye away from the singers is counterproductive. It is rather self-serving transference, the putting on of someone else’s clothes. And there is text (libretto by Peter Skavlan and Abramović), which muses on life and death. Abramović is nothing if not obsessed with death (see her RA exhibition). Maybe in confronting it, she is preparing for it. “Forever” is repeated, candles go out, clichés abound.
Eri Nakamura sings Violetta as Abramović dies on screen attended by Dafoe, Elbenita Kajtazi is Tosca as Abramović throws herself off a skyscraper in slow motion, Nadine Benjamin is Desdemona as Abramović with blood strip on her lower lip and chin is strangled by a python, Karah Son is Butterfly whilst Abramović exposes herself on a poisoned landscape and her voiceover muses on the mythological significance of butterflies, mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina is Carmen as Abramović in red matador suit tangles with Dafoe.
All this I buy until Donizetti’s gentle aria, “il dolce suono”, for the mad Lucia di Lammermoor. Sarah Tynan gives a moving vocal performance, the stage ought to focus entirely on her, but here we have Abramović breaking mirrors on screen, rending her bridal veil to shreds, smashing vases. Face and hands painted in bright red blood, this mad scene is grotesque. It distracts and diminishes rather than deepens. The pitiful drama is all there in the voice.
Sophie Bevan’s “Casta Diva” aria, Callas’s glorious spine-tingling signature tune one might say, has Dafoe and Abramović in gender swap, he in make-up and gold lamé dress, going into the flames. Over the top...
Blackout… Marko Nikodijević’s cinematic interlude music adds to the drama… and then the curtain rises on a reconstruction of Callas’s elegant bedroom in Paris. Mari(n)a is in bed, a voice speaks her thoughts and self instructions. She acts on them. Breaks another vase, opens the curtain on to the street noise, and exits. We hear “Casta Diva” in a recording by Callas, but it is cut off abruptly, as was her life at the age of fifty-four (1923–1977).
Maids—the seven singers—enter to clean the room, strip the bed and hang black gauze over furniture and mirrors. Is this all these young singers are good for, to clean up after the great Diva Divina? The end? No. Marina comes on in gold lamé gown and solemnly takes her bow, mimicking Maria, transformation complete.
Ninety minutes no interval is enough. I’d have liked to linger on the arias, and the sidelined singers, rather than the overwhelming images and cod psychology. But, it is Abramović’s show in all its empathy and embodiment, a bit heavy-handed at times, but sincere in capturing the vortex of life. Many of us have lost, and will lose, loved ones, and music can be both a solace and a twisting of the knife (Abramović’s forte).
The orchestra under the baton of Yoel Gamzou (ENO debut) is on good form. Female singers from the chorus augment the additional score segments from the two side balconies, and the uncredited flautist is lovely. Everyone takes a bow, even stage managers and crew. ENO is nothing if not egalitarian.