Maria Callas is on tour

[John F]

Visit from a dead diva
November 15, 2018
by Terry Teachout

Maria Callas gave a concert last week at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. That’s what the sign outside the hall said, anyway, even though the greatest operatic soprano of the 20th century has been dead since 1977. Nevertheless, she’s currently touring Europe, the U.S. and South America, with stops in more than a dozen additional cities between now and March, and if the turnout in Storrs was any indication, plenty of people are going to buy tickets.

Fine—but to what?

Yes, Callas is definitely dead, and no, that wasn’t her on stage at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, singing arias by Bellini, Bizet, Gounod, Ponchielli, Puccini and Verdi (including the popular “Habañera” from “Carmen”) with a 60-piece orchestra conducted by Eímear Noone. Nevertheless, “Callas in Concert” really happened, and those who saw it got their first taste of a technology that has the potential to revolutionize the concert business.

The “Callas Hologram Tour,” as it’s subtitled, is produced by BASE Hologram, an entertainment company that has also sent the late Roy Orbison “on tour” and is planning to do the same with Amy Winehouse next year. Using a modernized version of a 19th-century “magic” technique called Pepper’s Ghost, a video of Callas is projected onto a transparent screen in such a way as to make it appear that she is standing at center stage, flanked by two groups of orchestral musicians. While her full-color image is not in fact a real hologram, it closely resembles one. The 3-D “Callas” is translucent: You can see the orchestra players through her white gown as she walks past them. Otherwise, she looks startlingly, even disorientingly like a living person lit by a tightly focused pinspot….

https://www.wsj.com/articles/diva-back- ... 1542213762

So what's it like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7TATUT ... e=youtu.be

[maestrob]

Fascinating, John, both from a technological standpoint and the fact that Callas can still sell tickets!

[jbuck919]

I wouldn't take Storrs as a serious university location under any circumstances, and that's not just because I was lucky enough to be a grad student at Yale. Connecticut, unlike Massachusetts, does not have a strong system of higher education, public or private.

My college friend Ted, whom some of you met in NYC, witnessed one of the last rounds of recitals given by Callas with, I think his name was Giuseppe di Stefano. She was already vocally dead, a great loss and a tragedy.

[John F]

That last tour, with di Stefano along for vocal and moral support, was really ill-advised, though I doubt she paid any attention to whatever advice she may have received. It's often said that Callas's career was shortened by her choice of repertoire, but she made her professional debut in 1941 and retired in 1965; 24 years' singing is not a long career but not a short one either.

[lennygoran]

John F, thanks for posting this article-remember meeting Teachout a few times. Len

[Rach3]

Listen:

https://www.nporadio4.nl/concerten/8432 ... in-concert