VSO concert features Maria Callas hologram
Credit to Author: Aleesha Harris| Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 22:07:21 +0000
When: Feb. 22, 8 p.m.
Where: Orpheum Theatre
Info and tickets: From $40 at vancouversymphony.ca
Nostalgia meets state-of-the-art 21st century technology in a surprising new initiative at the Vancouver Symphony: a program focused on that most 20th century of divas, Maria Callas.
This is not just a tribute concert, nor a program of great hits from her characteristic repertoire. This is a technological evocation of Callas in holographic form, a ghost in the machine, mounted by production company BASE Hologram.
Maria Callas in 1968
Hologram shows devoted to dead performing artists have been around for a while. Events built around Frank Zappa, Buddy Holly, and Roy Orbison have done well at the box office, despite some audience pushback over the ethics involved.
But it’s a startling idea to build a show around an operatic diva. And what greater opera legend is there than Maria Callas?
Born Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos in Manhattan in 1923, Callas was educated in Athens, then began singing professionally in 1941. At first she sang almost everything, even Wagner. But, under the watchful eye of Italian industrialist (and Callas’ first husband) Giovanni Battista Meneghini, and mentored by conductor Tullio Serafin, she reinvented herself as a bel canto specialist.
She was always controversial, always in the news. But she was remarkable. In her prime, her acting style was as inimitable as her voice. The late Alan Aberbach, founder of Vancouver’s Opera Club, told me about seeing all of her Met performances as Tosca one season. Each was memorable, but on one particular evening the stars aligned and Aberbach witnessed the opera performance of a lifetime as Callas took extraordinary risks and triumphed utterly.
Maria Callas performing in Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma in Paris in 1964.
Her private life — not that someone as newsworthy as Callas could ever be private — could be the grist for a fine opera libretto: she left Meneghini to become the mistress of Aristotle Onassis from 1959 until 1968.
Then Onassis married Jacqueline Kennedy. A humiliated Callas tried film acting, then teaching; her sessions at Juilliard became the subject of Terrence McNally’s play Master Class. There was a profitable comeback tour (including a March 1974 date at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre), but the glory days were over. She died in Paris in 1977, aged just 53.
Talking with the VSO’s Neil Middleton, I got a tangible sense of the orchestra bravely attempting something far outside the usual concert model.
BASE Hologram developed the Callas show to get into the classical world with an iconic artist, and approached the orchestra. The logistics are sophisticated, explains Middleton.
“It’s a little bit magical: proprietary technology from the company uses multiple projectors to create a 3-D image of Callas standing on the stage.”
Recordings of the singer are used; her vocal part is extracted and played back while the orchestra performs live, similar to the VSO strategy for its wildly successful movie nights.
Irish conductor and composer Eímear Noone.
This demands a conductor perfectly comfortable not just with tailoring an orchestral accompaniment, but also a specialist not spooked by technology.
Middleton believes the project has just the right fit with Irish conductor and composer Eímear Noone, who crafted soundtracks for video games like Overwatch and World Of Warcraft, and recently received accolades for being the first woman to conduct the orchestra at the Oscar’s.
While the VSO is chuffed to debut the Canadian presentation of a classical holographic project, trying out new technology is a complicated endeavour with more than a few risks involved.
To assure everyone in the audience gets the best possible experience, some Orpheum seats will be off limits.
“Seats have to be limited because the hologram is not perfectly visible from every point in the theatre,” says Middleton. “This is definitely a suspense of disbelief proposition.
“It’s a chance for my generation to discover an rare talent in the only way still possible — to experience what made Callas such an iconic figure.”
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