• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2018 / November / Archives for 15th

Archives for November 15, 2018

Visit from a dead diva

November 15, 2018 by Terry Teachout

In this week’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I report on “Callas in Concert: The Hologram Tour,” which I saw last week in Connecticut. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

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….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

A trailer for “Callas in Concert: The Hologram Tour”:

Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony perform the Grieg Piano Concerto in London in 1988. The solo part is performed by a reproducing piano that is playing back a pair of piano rolls of the concerto that were cut by Percy Grainger, one of its most noted exponents, in 1921:

So you want to see a show?

November 15, 2018 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Ferryman (drama, PG-13, Broadway transfer of London production, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Lifespan of a Fact (comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 13, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, nearly all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Waverly Gallery (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 27, some shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Girl from the North Country (jukebox musical, PG-13, closes Dec. 23, reviewed here)
• Mother of the Maid (drama, PG-13, closes Dec. 23, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:
• The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, too conceptually complicated for small children, closes Nov. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Uncle Vanya (drama, G, not suitable for children, reviewed here)

Almanac: W.H. Auden on mass entertainment

November 15, 2018 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. This is bad for everyone; the majority lose all genuine taste of their own, and the minority become cultural snobs.”

W.H. Auden, “The Poet and the City”

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

November 2018
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« Oct   Dec »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Simply splendid Sondheim
  • Almanac: Tennessee Williams on theatrical characters
  • What Patricia Highsmith wrought
  • Almanac: Samuel Butler on sickness
  • Snapshot: Lieber and Stoller appear on What’s My Line?

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in