The Diva is Present: Some Thoughts on Marina Abramović’s 7 Deaths of Maria Callas (2020)

Abstract

Nearly fifty years after Maria Callas’s death (1977), her myth continues to grow through both traditional tributes and new media projects, including immersive installations, hologram concerts and posthumous duets. Marina Abramović’s 7 Deaths of Maria Callas (2020), with music by Marko Nikodijević and video by Nabil Elderkin, emerges within this context. Combining opera, video and performance, the work restages the deaths of seven iconic heroines – Violetta, Tosca, Desdemona, Cio-Cio-San, Carmen, Lucia, and Norma – each sung live by a different soprano against projected video backdrops. The videos feature Abramović and Willem Dafoe enacting each death through “consumption”, “jumping”, “strangulation”, “Hara-Kiri”, “knifing”, “madness” and “burning”. A final, eighth scene recreates Callas’s own death in her Paris apartment in 1977, with Abramović performing on stage as her double. This article has a twofold purpose: first, to explore the tensions between the performing arts and performance art, the interpretative challenges posed by intermediality and intertextuality, and the recurring trope of the female protagonist’s death in opera; and second, to demonstrate how 7 Deaths of Maria Callas reflects a broader paradox present in recent projects surrounding the singer: on one hand, a fascination with the multiplication of images, doubles, copies, avatars, and media; on the other, an enduring obsession with the values of originality, including authenticity, liveness, and presence.