Building upon earlier works of the choreo-opera tandem Åsa and Carl Unander-Scharin (such as Robocygne, Olimpia, The Lamentations of Orpheus), and in collaboration with dramaturge Marin Blazevic, this project seeks to explore operatic voice and bodily expression in a novel constellation, revisiting and reconstructing the artistry of the ultimate opera singer – Maria Callas – through architecture of theatrical space, robotics, interactive technologies, choreography, video, new music and live performance.

We consider opera singing – in its exceptional cases and moments – as a radical performance art. In an attempt to enhance the complexity and intensity of expression, an opera artist might push her/his body to a high risk performance – when mis-sing the tone, getting out of breath, damaging vocalization organs, even utmost physical and mental exhaustion (often, paradoxically, merged with exaltation), are posing a threat to the progress of rendition.

Maria Callas as a radical performance artist, and in particular her profoundly expressionist enactment of the character of Medea in Cherubini’s opera, will be in the focus of this research/project on the intersections of corporeal and technological performance. The project/research will performatively refer to and build upon minuscule portions of a number of live recordings of Callas’ renditions of Medea from 1953 to 1961.

ReCallas:Medea is a commission from The Croatian National Opera of Rijeka for The Cultural Capitol of Europe 2020 (click on logos for information)