Performing death: Marina Abramović’s 7 Deaths of Maria Callas

Francesco Marzano

doi:10.18778/1505-9057.59.10

Authors

Francesco Marzano Graduate in Modern Philology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2081-6472

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1505-9057.59.10

Keywords:

performance, opera, Abramović, Callas, death, icons, presence

Abstract

This essay analyses the opera project 7 Deaths of Maria Callas by Marina Abramović, premiered in Munich in September, 2020. The first section reconstructs the role that the Greek soprano played in the life of the Serbian performer, bringing the latter to a gradual sense of self-identification. Then, the thirty-years-long development of the original concept of the video piece How to Die into the actual project through its various stages is taken into account, and the stage realisation of the work is described in detail. The third section focuses on the representation of death in Marina Abramović’s performances, while section four compares Callas and Abramović’s works and lives, and their status as iconic women. The last section retraces Abramović’s artistic path which has led her from her extreme and essential performances of the 1970s to her recent experimentations with other media and to her meditation on immaterial art.

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Author Biography

Francesco Marzano, Graduate in Modern Philology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan

Francesco Marzano – is a graduate student of Modern Philology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan (Italy). He has written articles about Giovanni Boccaccio and about European performative theatre. He lives in Cologne (Germany), where he works as flutist and as freelance journalist for the Westdeutscher Rundfunk.

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