A tribute to Maria Callas (7 Deaths of M. Callas, ENO, 11.11.2023)

Maria Callas was definitely one of those persons whose legacy will live forever. Highly musically intelligent, she always wanted to portray the real emotions and drama through the music with an utmost respect for the composers and the musical style. Her magical transformation into characters is unparalleled and her sense of proportion, diction and the use of dynamics hardly matched. She gave it all, sacrificing her own health and, ultimately, her "vocal capital".

As the operatic world is remembering the 100th anniversary of her birth, there are and will be many tributes paid to her during this period.

Even though her carrier didn't last as long as some others' singers, she is the one who is remembered and the one who, with her courage and determination, changed forever the way the opera is perceived. Callas brought the ultimate "greatness" to the stage, which (judging for the few filmed on-stage performances) must have created a very strong and unforgettable moments. However, she also showed the danger that this "above and beyond" can bring to the singers and interpreters. With her "giving it all" approach, she under-minded her vocal sanity and ultimately lost confidence in her once-so-powerful voice. Still, listening to her arias, I am always moved and full of admiration because she cared so much for the composers, for the truth and for the art.

One on many tributes paid to her this year was the performance of 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, conceived by the internationally renowned performance artist, Marina Abramović, at the English National opera (ENO) in London's Coliseum.

Marina Abramović complemented the seven most iconic characters that Maria Callas sang or portrayed on stage, with her interpretation and understanding of the inner emotional world of those operatic heroines. Callas portrayed those heroines as real women, with their desires and passions (like Carmen or Violeta), who often struggled because they lived in times when men decided on their destiny or the society was not yet prepared to accept them as they were.

Abramović didn't shy away from exposing her nakedness and went even further in her visual interpretations. She explored the darker side of man and woman relationship, the possessiveness (Don Jose in Carmen), powerlessness (Tosca), jealousy (Othello) and the "madness" it can lead the woman to (as for example in Lucia di Lammermoor). She also found the the parallels between the heroines' struggles and Callas' own struggles. Abandoned, in her solitude, watching the old photos and remembering her prime times, Callas little-by-little let her world dissolve and said her final "goodbye" in her Paris apartment, in 1977.

Callas' legacy to the operatic world is enormous: through her fight to get the opera performances where she wanted, which means not just singing the beautiful arias to please the audience but to portray the real feelings that her characters "lived" on stage and make their stories believable, she definitely moved the boundaries and lifted the standards for all opera singers. She also wanted to show the multiple facets of the feminine characters, not only the aesthetically pleasing outer body frame but the sensuality, sexuality and desire. That, in 1950's, was not the picture that the society was prepared to fully appreciate (it came a decade later, in 1960's with the sexual liberation). So, through those heroines, Callas opened something hidden, not openly spoken about but something, once there, could not be ignored.

It takes woman to fully understand woman. Abramović had certainly a 3-dimensional approach to Callas, her heroines and the world she lived in. Sometimes disturbing, maybe challenging, Abramović pointed out that to be a diva or a genius and to achieved the immortality is not a "given", it is a life-long dedication, struggle but also love for what we strive for.

By the way, if you are in London, there is an excellent exhibition in the V&A museum called Diva. Featuring M. Callas and her Casta Diva and many other female (and handful of male) singers, actresses and performing artists, this exhibition is a true audio-visual feast.