Last Updated on February 7, 2026
A Visual and Musical Feast at the ENO
London is having a Marina Abramovic moment right now with her ‘opera project’ “7 Deaths of Maria Callas” opening at the ENO as well as a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Royal Academy (through to January 1st). If you are unfamiliar with Abramovic, it’s well worth a visit to the RA before going to the Coliseum to contextualise many of the visual references in the piece.
The Serbian-born but New York based performance artist Abramovic began her career in the early 1970s and now describes herself as the “mother of performance art”. She was clearly influenced by Yoko Ono (the grandmother?) and the Fluxus group of artists with their John Cage inspired ‘scores’ (sets of instructions for the performer). Ono’s works such as ‘Cut Piece’ (1964), in which the audience was asked to cut the artist’s clothing off her body, set the template for much of the type of work that Abramovic has further developed. As with Ono’s influence on John Lennon and the Beatles, Abramovic’s performance aesthetic has infiltrated pop culture through the visual branding of Lady Gaga who studied with her. Unlike the pop provocateur who used the shock value present in some of Marina Abramovic’s pieces to gain market share and fame, the Serbian artist’s work manifests a visceral connection between the audience and the performer, pushing the artist to the limits of her physical and mental endurance. Abramovic talks about creating an “energy dialogue…. The audience and the performer make the piece together …It’s all about being there in real time. You can’t rehearse performance …you can’t do many of these types of things twice”. I’m interested to see how her approach will transfer to the less spontaneous performance dynamic of opera with the additional barrier of the 4th Wall and wherein performers follow a fixed script with an audience trained to cheer, clap, shout ‘Bravo/Brava’ …and occasionally boo.
‘7 Deaths of Maria Callas’ premiered at the Bayerische Staatsoper in September 2020, with subsequent performances in Munich, Athens, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Naples. It features seven of the great female death scene operatic arias sung in their original language. The arias are composed by an operatic A-team of Bellini, Bizet, Donizetti, Puccini and Verdi and are all associated with Callas. They are performed by seven singers, all dressed identically in a dowdy hotel maid’s outfit with hair scraped back and centre parted. Each aria is framed by a short film projected onto a screen at the back of the stage featuring Abramovic and American film star Willem Dafoe. These are titled “Burning”, “Knifing”, “Jumping”, “Hara-kiri”, “Strangulation”, “Consumption” and “Madness” and relate even if tangentially to the demise of the operatic heroine of the moment. The power of the images and the uniformity of the singers’ looks ensure that the music has a secondary and accompanying role acting as a soundtrack to the visuals rather than as the focus of the performance.
Throughout the arias Abramovic lies motionless in a bed to the side of the stage. Between the arias, we see Marco Brambilla’s stunning video projections featuring extraordinary swirling weather systems with Abramovic’s grainy recorded voiceover reflections setting up the next sung performance. These interludes feature synthetic recorded musical soundscapes often reflecting the stormy visuals created by composer Marko Nikodijevic. There is a final and somewhat unresolved staged scene set in a Parisian hotel room in which Abramovic as the great diva raises herself from what we imagine is her deathbed. She follows a series of voiceover instructions that lead her not to jump out of the window as we of course hope, but to walk out of the door as a recording of Callas sings, with the diva living forever through her musical legacy.
Israeli-American conductor Yoel Gamzou conducts the seven singers and the ENO band with sensitivity, letting the vocalists lead. Marko Nikodijevic’s score starts in a traditional form with an overture; there are chiming open 5ths in the flutes and tuned percussion, and then low string tremolandi leading into a sinuous and plaintive cor anglais melody that evokes the opening of The Rite of Spring. It sets us up well for the first aria “Addio, del passato”, taken from Act 3 from La Traviata. Violetta’s reflections as she accepts her impending death is beautifully performed with a soft-toned stillness by Eri Nakamura, a former Jette Parker Young Artist who famously stepped in to replace the great Anna Netrebko as Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi. There is no attempt to mimic the tremulous vibrato in Callas’ performance and unlike the great diva Nakamura crescendos through the final top A, adding a sense of musical dramatic intensity not present in the staging. The accompanying film is very simple. Abramovic is on her deathbed and her lover Dafoe approaches her and they gaze at each other.
The second aria is “Vissi d’arte” from Act 2 of Tosca given a transcendent performance by Kosovan soprano Elbenita Kajtazi. It’s preceded by Abramovic’s voiceover: “It’s not dangerous to jump…Only when you land does it become dangerous.” We see Marina Abramovic in black and white holding the limp body of Dafoe with the Empire State Building in the background. She then jumps to her death from an office block floating down to her death in slo-mo with her diaphanous white outfit floating around her. It’s an arresting image and whilst it reminds us of Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi’s unfortunate death in the opera and Tosca’s final leap off the castle walls there is no reference to the political backstory or the motivating force of Tosca’s jealousy that drives the opera.
Former ENO Harewood Artist Nadine Benjamin gives us a sonorous and pious take on “Ave Maria”, Desdemona’s aria from Act 4 of Otello before her eponymous lover strangles her. Dafoe in a black jacket studded with rhinestones, places a huge boa constrictor around the neck of Abramovic referencing the artist’s series of Dragon’s Head performances between 1990 and 1994, with her red lipstick being smudged and denoting blood. Korean soprano Karah Son delivers an ethereal performance of “Un bel dì, vedremo” from Madame Butterfly, Act 2, capturing the domestic and gentle hopes as well as the passion of the about-to-be thwarted Cio-cio San who ends the opera by committing hara-kiri. Abramovic and Dafoe are scientists dressed as in white Hazmat suits walking through a post-apocalyptic landscape and carrying an American flag. Abramovic pulls hers off suit and helmet, exposing her breast and then dies of asphyxiation. It’s a clever way of recontextualising the American imperialism, selfishness and sense of exceptionalism that leads to Cio-Cio San’s fate.
Mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina brought the house down with her performance of Carmen’s Act 1 aria, “L’amour est un oiseau rebel”. Her vocal tone has a hint of huskiness which is perfect for the role and she inhabits the sensuous lilt of the song’s Habanera rhythm with authenticity. Abramovic is dressed as a toreador, Dafoe throws a rope around her leading to some rope and role play as they stage an erotically charged and ultimately lethal tug of war as she falls onto Dafoe’s unsheathed blade. This echoes Carmen’s death at the hand of Don José.
In Lucia’s aria “Il dolce suono” from Act 3 of Lucia di Lammermoor, Sarah Tynan showcases her exquisite coloratura in the aria that presages the character’s insanity and death. Abramovic is a deranged bride who tears off her veil and smashes mirrors ending up covered with blood in a violent counterpoint to the transcendental fatalism of the lyric. The final aria is from Act 1 of Norma. Soprano Sophie Bevan took a while to fully inhabit the romance of “Casta Diva” with Norma’s falling in love with a Roman soldier leading to her eventual self-immolation. The accompanying film is pure Abramovic as she and Dafoe push themselves to their physical limits as they approach a pyre, their skin appearing to melt from the heat.
So, what kind of piece is this? It’s certainly not opera as we know it. There is no clear narrative thread or much in the way of a larger musical structure. It’s also not a Maria Callas bio-opera which must be something someone will undertake at some time as her story has all the elements of Grand Opera. This is a Marina Abramovic performance piece with the artist projecting her own art practice and persona through the medium of Callas and conflating the two. This intertextuality is further complicated by the arias each of which is part of a separate narrative structure with its own resonances. It seems that Abramovic feels a kinship with the well-documented suffering of Callas and of these tragic operatic heroines; but unlike Callas who is often seen as a victim, Abramovic owns her own suffering, much of which has been self-inflicted and memorialised as part of her art practice and used as a method of transcending the everyday travails of life. It is no surprise that her work ‘Four Crosses’ features photos of Abramovic pulling faces shaped into a cross. She is the icon, the saint that suffers for us (like Callas) but conversely, she is the diva shining in the gold dress at the end of the show, centre stage taking the applause. She is alive and a survivor. Over the last two seasons, the ENO has consolidated its existing reputation as the premier location for innovation in opera in the UK. Abramovic has opened up a new type of dialogue with the art form and if you are a fan of her art which I am or curious about how opera can renew itself then you should see this work.
5-11 November
English National Opera, London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, London WC2N 4ES
Seven good singers wasted on a piece of self indulgent vanity