For more than three decades the conceptual artist Marina Abramovic has wanted to create art “dedicated” to the life and art of Maria Callas. She ended up making a work about death instead.
“Most operas end with the woman dying and more often than not, it is because of love,” Abramovic writes in the introduction to a new book The 7 Deaths of Maria Callas (based on her opera of the same name). “She will leap from precipices, burn, be strangulated, stabbed or simply go mad.”
In this case, it’s the latter. This image, by photographer Marco Anelli, represents Abramovic’s take on Donizetti’s Lucia De Lammermoor, which in turn was based (loosely) on Walter Scott’s novel The Bride of Lamermoor.
The opera was one that Maria Callas did much to revive in the 1950s after decades of neglect. Callas, Abramovic suggests, died of a broken heart (she was in love with Aristotle Onassis who, instead, married Jackie Kennedy). There’s probably an opera to be made from that story too.
The 7 Deaths of Maria Callas by Marina Abramovic is published by Damiani, £55. Photograph © Marco Anelli, courtesy of the Marina Abramovic Archives
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here