A hologram stage show gives us a glimpse into the future of showbiz performing | Peter Goers

Watching a hologram performance provided “one of the most remarkable and stunning” stage show moments. But, as Peter Goers writes, it was also a little odd.

The great Greek opera diva Maria Callas died in 1977 so nowadays you’d only have a ghost of a chance to see her. But we did.

The excellent, avid Foundation for Hellenic Studies in SA presented the European Union sponsored production of Maria Callas: A Concert In Hologram at the Dunstan Playhouse last Saturday night.

It was a celebration of the glory of a Greek star on the centenary of her birth and a fitting celebration of the many ways Greeks have enriched our culture, cuisine and society.

Among a beautifully dressed audience, I sat next to ever-youthful Angela Condous and the glamorous actress Joanna Tsalikis and I noted that the hair of Greek women of a certain age never seems to go grey.

Is it the olive oil, feta, tzatziki or a worry-free life? Ah, the smell of the Greece paint, hairspray and the roar of the crowd …

And then if the audience wasn’t enough glamour and magic, the magnificent Maria Callas, La Divina herself, walked on to the stage.

She was exquisitely gowned, coiffured and bejewelled. The entire audience gasped and many cried.

It was one of the most remarkable, stunning and affecting moments I’ve ever experienced in a theatre.

A hologram of the legendary soprano Maria Callas has featured in a show that is touring the world.

It was, to use a Greek word, an epiphany. Callas looked at her most ideal – strikingly beautiful, elegant and commanding.

She never came to Australia so here was a unique chance to appreciate her sublime artistry.

The musical director and pianist (on stage with four superb musicians from the Elder Conservatorium) started to play and Callas sang and there wasn’t a dry eye (or seat) in the house.

But beware Greeks bearing gifs.

You had to pinch yourself but of course it isn’t Callas, as she’s been dead for 46 years. It isn’t even a hologram of Callas but that of a very talented lookalike actress imitating Callas very well and miming her voice.

Suspension of disbelief (on which all art depends) comprehensively overwhelms the audience and we want it to really be Callas so it is Callas.

There is no visible screen and the diva is in 3D and life-size.

The hologram never buffers and Callas sings her greatest hits for 75 minutes replete with guyed ovations and encores.

Maria Callas is a revered performer who has been dead for 46 years but whose shows live in via hologram. Picture: Christian Steiner

It was thrilling, strange, glamorous, unnerving and bravura … rather like the audience.

This holographic resurrection is patented as an Enhanced Immersive Experience.

I can get that at home but not with Maria Callas and other artists thus already revived, such as Roy Orbison and Abba.

It’s hi-tech nostalgia and it takes years of work to achieve the imitation and the synchronicity of image, voice and accompaniment.

We will doubtless see more great artists thus replicated and presented which is both exciting and exploitative.

Entrepreneurs will love it because a hologram doesn’t complain about its dressing room, get a sore throat or walk off the stage in a huff, or a minute and a huff, as sadly, Callas occasionally did.

The hologram of an ideal Callas gives us a taste of the artist whom Meryl Streep (and many others) called the greatest of the 20th Century.

We relish her stagecraft, style and her idiosyncratic voice which was often more varnish than velvet. Her voice was a cubist painting.

Hers was a tragic life from being prostituted by her appalling mother to commanding the world’s greatest stages, to being betrayed by her lover Onassis, to a lonely death with only the echo of rapturous applause.

And here she is among us again, (sort of), as a spectre summoned by a show business seance. It was a great experience but odd. The next day it sat heavily, like something I ate.

Who’s next? Nana Mouskouri and Demis Roussos in holographic concert?

It was a reminder that gimmicks come and go but nothing can or will ever beat live performance.

This reminder of Callas was both fittingly Greek and geek.