The immortal (hologram) Maria Callas
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
It is one of the most celebrated quotes from the film Jurassic Park. As the driverless cars approach the giant entrance gates leading into the safari park, Dr Malcolm exclaims: “What have they got in there — King Kong?”
We can forgive his incredulity. Who would ever believe that an extinct species could be brought back to life? There may seem to be no limits to what DNA can tell us about life, but reviving a dinosaur and seeing it move and hearing it roar like the real thing? Surely not.
As for transferring science fiction stories like that to a high art form such as opera, that would never hold up, would it? Hold on a moment. Buy a ticket for one of the upcoming European performances of Callas in Concert and, like Lewis Carroll’s White Queen, you might soon find yourself believing six impossible things before breakfast.
Yes, opera has its dinosaurs, too. In the Romantic era, giant celebrities such as Giuditta Pasta, Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti roamed the opera houses of Europe, making promoters cower. More recently, earth-shaking star singers (in every sense) such as Luciano Pavarotti and Montserrat Caballé have trodden in their outsized footsteps.
The greatest of them all, at least in the 20th century, was the American-Greek soprano Maria Callas. Born in 1923, last seen in staged opera in 1965, died in 1977, Callas would seem to have sung her last. But no — anybody who tried and failed to get tickets for one of her legendary concerts is about to get another chance.
The comeback tour has already started. The show kicked off in the US in the autumn and is due to land in Europe towards the end of November. The seven-city European leg of the tour opens at the Coliseum in London, where, in the words of the company’s advertising, Callas “returns to the stage, in all her grandeur, confirming her immortality to stunned audiences”. This really does give a new slant to the phrase “immortal stars” of the opera stage.
It is time to come clean. Callas is not being resurrected from her DNA, Jurassic Park-style. She is a hologram. She will stride out on to the stage and perform a concert of favourite arias, and even scenes from some of the rarer operas in her repertoire, to the accompaniment of a live orchestra.
Film-goers will be familiar with the realism that today’s technology can achieve. We have seen Andy Serkis turn into a CGI Gollum in Lord of the Rings. The next Star Wars movie will have Carrie Fisher taking a final bow, thanks to unused footage, despite having died two years ago. If actors can come back from the dead, why not opera singers?
The concept doesn’t simply use archive footage of Callas (a number of her concerts were broadcast on TV, though only one act of an opera survives of her live in the theatre). This 90-minute show, a Base Hologram production, uses Callas’s audio recordings, stripping the voice off the original so that a live orchestra can take the place of the one on the recording. Then a body double works with the director to choreograph the movements and everything is married together using digital and laser imaging, and CGI.
The trick is getting the illusion to work in the live ambience of a theatre. The person responsible for keeping the hologram Callas and the orchestra together will be Irish conductor Eímear Noone, who comes to the job with experience in synchronising music and film. “This is not a gimmick, but an advance made possible by brand-new technology,” she says. “I was quite blunt with the production team when I was asked at first, but this has turned out to be the best of what I thought it could be — a homage to a great artist, and creative in its own right, too.”
At the early showings, Noone was struck by the response of the audiences. “It was as if they were watching a lucid dream of one of the greatest singers,” she says. “We can’t get a live experience any more from these great artists once we have lost them. It is hard for us even to recapture the first time we heard Callas on a recording, or the first time we saw photographs of her, because we have become desensitised through repeated experiences. People are surprised how moving this can be. It is moving for me, if I hear the rustle of her dress, or her footsteps, behind me.”
The late Roy Orbison has already starred in his own live show. Amy Winehouse is due to follow soon. And then there will be Jack Horner’s World of Dinosaurs, overseen by the lead scientific consultant from the Jurassic Park films.
At the speed technology is advancing, just imagine where this could lead. We could have operas starring imaginary casts from the past. How about Verdi’s La traviata with Callas and Enrico Caruso? Or Nellie Melba and Luciano Pavarotti? Neither pair was alive at the same time, but that will not matter any more.
In sport, Fred Perry could come back for a Wimbledon final against Roger Federer, and Bobby Moore could play alongside Gareth Bale for Real Madrid. For a lively debate in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill could face Tony Blair, or David Lloyd George tussle with Margaret Thatcher.
It just needs a leap of the imagination. Stop thinking about these people as the great names of the past. Thanks to technology, they are coming back as the stars of the future. And don’t even ask what King Kong has in his diary next.
‘Callas in Concert’, Coliseum, London, November 25, tickets.londoncoliseum.org
Follow @FTLifeArts on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first. Subscribe to FT Life on YouTube for the latest FT Weekend videos
Comments