A pictorial illumination on the face of Marina Abramovic reclining on her deathbed and a voiceover that reminds her that she is “a flame exposed to the elements”. The Liceu in cast in black. And seven well-known opera arias that are going to occupy the room in one of the most painful and beautiful videographic contexts that have been seen in this lyrical coliseum.
This is how 7 deaths of Maria Callas begins, the production that the Serbian performer who opens up before the public, the one that inexorably drags him towards his most intimate feelings, has brought to the Liceu – only three performances – transmuting himself into the spirit of Maria Callas (or letting her own run parallel to the soprano's). The result was an exciting first part, for everyone from the opera, who let themselves be carried away by the conceptual recreation of seven arias that made Callas great.
Beginning with Addio del passato, from La traviata, with Gilda Fiume as Violetta, and with Abramovic dying of tuberculosis in the virtual plane, while Willem Dafoe cries for her in the role of lover Alfredo, the cause of the grief that has led her to fall ill and to become extinct.
Then comes "Vissi d'arte" by Tosca in the voice of Vanessa Goikoetxea; Desdemona's Perghiera in Otello, by Benedetta Torre; "Un bel dì vedremo" by Madama Butterfly, with Antonia Ahyoung Kim as Cio-Cio San; Rinat Shaham in the habanera of Carmen that Callas never sang in an opera but made it referential on recording; Leonor Bonilla in the scene of the madness of Lucia di Lammermoor, at the end of which the audience was forced to break the silence with irrepressible applause..., and finally the casta diva of Norma played by Marta Matheú.
This act of exorcism by Callas at the Liceu – where the diva was not well received in her only performance in Barcelona (because she was nothing like Tebaldi) – consists of a trail of deaths for love, all of them very different: Marina Abramovic jumps into the void from a Manhattan skyscraper to stage the death of Floria Tosca... in one of the most paradoxically beautiful moments in video performance.
The slow tempo of the careful film editing, along with the beauty of the voices and the music, become irresistible. Although in the second part, in which Abramovic comes to life and gets out of bed –or is it the spirit of the now-deceased Callas?–, the force of the performance declines. Probably because it is not suitable for a room of more than two thousand people. After all, Abramovic's powerful speech has been developed in museum halls.
Even so, as was to be expected, the proposal of the divine, the healer, the enlightened one –whom everyone wants to get close to to be touched by their fate or by their spark– has registered a full house. “It is my first opera, although very conceptual”, says the artist. In reality, it is the first great theatrical piece of hers –and even though she hated theater when she was young– that deals with the life of an operatic myth.
And if the Liceu had opted to program it twice as many functions, it is possible that the capacity would have continued to be filled to capacity. The frenzy with which the public has responded to the presence of this pioneer of performance art is unprecedented.
"Let's see, that lady has no idea who Callas was," said a long-standing subscriber to the theater. "This is nothing more than the typical show for posh."
Between the final warm applause there were isolated protests that found small loopholes to demonstrate. But it is that yesterday there were 27 tickets left for the three evenings, all of them without visibility. Abramovic has attracted a non-opera audience to the “Liceu de les Arts”. The Moco Museum Barcelona entourage was large, which yesterday morning unveiled the newly acquired work by Abramovic.
But the thing is that the show also attracted neophytes... Young girls who circulated on 8-M with the symbol of the woman drawn on their cheekbones went into the box office prey to curiosity. "What's that? We want tickets!" But not. They are sold out.
For the rest, the energy flowed yesterday in the Gran Teatre, from scene to room and from room to scene. Abramovic is, at 76, an expeditious spirit only slowed down by a possible torn ligament in his knee pending surgery. For the rest, the roses are envious of him.
The Liceu Symphony was lent by the hand of maestro Antonio Méndez to serve not only the wonderful arias of the repertoire, but the score by Marko Nikodijević that serves as a link and that takes on greater prominence in the second part, with the effective death of Maria Callas , in which the Cor del Gran Teatre makes its appearance from the proscenium of the theater.
