HOW MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ AND THE OPERA SINGER SONDRA RADVANOVSKY BOTH REVEL IN RISK. LIVRE: LE MAÎTRE DES AIRS, DE TARAS GRESCOE

 Marina Abramović: Last year, a friend who I was working with on my opera project “7 Deaths of Maria Callas” in Naples told me, “You have to come to Majorca and hear the voice that is closest to Callas’s.” There was no way I wasn’t going. Sondra was singing [at the Cap Rocat hotel], and the performance broke my heart. Afterward, I was invited for dinner, and we talked about our painful backgrounds. Everything was happening — the death of her mother at the same time as her divorce. I felt like my younger sister had just come out of the cosmos.

Our work is very emotional. My public cries, her public cries. We all cry. It comes from the deep honesty of the work. We’re not acting or pretending. We believe what we’re showing. Sondra’s Medea [at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2022] blew my mind. She crawled, she had blue legs from the injuries, her makeup was running — she didn’t care.

Sondra doesn’t have children, and I never wanted to have them. So many women start as the great artist and then, as mothers, they can’t continue with the same intensity. Right now, if you told me to go to New Zealand, I’d be ready in 10 minutes. 

I don’t have any commitments that keep me away from what I want to do. I’m 76, and I have work booked until 2028. I have no time to think about dying. I work and then, when my body gives up, it gives up. Picasso made hundreds of erotic artworks in the years before he died. That’s the life force that artists should have.

Sondra Radvanovsky: I’ve finally gotten to the point where I don’t care if you think I’m fat or ugly, a good or bad singer, a good or bad person. That’s what I’ve learned from Marina. She’s given me the strength to be vulnerable and to take risks.

Before “Medea,” I’d never been willing to go that close to the fire, so to speak. It’s thrilling, but it can be dangerous. Imagine singing a very vocally difficult opera while crying. After watching Marina, I decided to try it.

We’re both strong women, and there’s a word that’s usually used to describe strong women — [the word for] a female dog. I can’t imagine growing up with Marina’s strength in her generation. She didn’t just step out of her box, she screamed from the rooftops, and I think about the hate mail she must have received, the nastiness and the words used to describe her.

There’s also a spiritual side to us both. One day, we were sitting in Marina’s apartment in New York when a dove landed on the railing of her balcony. I always equate a dove with my father visiting me. 

She said, “In all the years that I’ve lived in this apartment, a dove has never landed there. It’s fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it.” I said, “That’s why we’re kindred spirits: We both believe in something bigger than us. It’s where our art comes from.” We sat there for a few moments, looking at the bird.

https://dnyuz.com/2023/04/20/how-marina-abramovic-and-the-opera-singer-sondra-radvanovsky-both-revel-in-risk/

ET UN AUTRE LIVRE DE "LES RENCONTRES 

PHILOSOPHIQUES DE MONACO"

Plongeant les lecteurs dans la Rome des années 1920-1930, à l’époque où Mussolini remodelait la capitale italienne à son image, Le Maître des Airs raconte l’histoire d’un héros improbable : Lauro de Bosis, fils d’un aristocrate italien et d’une beauté de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, qui s’est transformé en un Icare des temps modernes, prenant seul les commandes d’un petit avion pour démontrer que la prétendue maîtrise du ciel par le Duce n’était qu’un bluff. En 1931, Lauro de Bosis, poète et aviateur, parviendra à larguer au-dessus de Rome des milliers de tracts incitant la population italienne à la désobéissance, avant de s’abîmer en mer et de disparaître à jamais.  Le tract s’ouvrait par ces mots : « Qui que tu sois, tu maudis certainement le Fascisme et tu en ressens toute la honte servile. Mais, par ton inertie, tu en partages la responsabilité. » Entremêlant son récit d’épisodes de la vie d’autres artistes et intellectuels contemporains (horripilés par le fascisme, comme Hemingway, ou au contraire séduits par lui, comme Ezra Pound), Taras Gresoe nous offre le portrait d’un héros magnifique.  C’est une histoire inspirante de résistance, un exemple qui, de jour en jour, se révèle plus essentiel pour notre époque.