Hafez hologram to perform second round of shows at Dubai Opera this month
The Black Nightingale will descend on Dubai Opera for Eid Al Fitr. A hologram version of the beloved Egyptian crooner Abdel Halim Hafez will perform a pair of shows at the Downtown Dubai venue.
The digitised version of the singer, who died in 1977 at the age of 47, will perform many of his hits while backed by a live orchestra.
Taking place on Thursday and Friday, May 13 and 14, this will mark the hologram’s second round of shows after a sold-out debut concert at the Baron Empain Palace in Cairo.
Organised by Dubai’s pan-Arab TV broadcaster MBC and UAE production company NDP, the show is created by the team behind the Umm Kulthum hologram concert, which was unveiled in a 2019 show in Saudi Arabia’s Hegra and went on to successfully tour the region.
Similar to that project, the digitised Hafez was built by technicians who studied hundreds of hours of performances and had extensive consultations with family members and professional associates.
The orchestra will also stick to the song sheets. With the hologram performer tightly synchronised to the original music score, the orchestra’s role is to bolster the sounds and to create a truly natural live show environment.
Referred to as Al Andaleeb Al Asmar (The Black Nightingale), he was the quintessential Arabic singer. Hafez’s romantic and patriotic songs, delivered with his deep, sensual vocals, were defined by his subtlety.
Where his peers often expressed themselves in vocal histrionics, Hafez kept it cool with songs such as Sawah and Gana El Hawa exhibiting a croon both glacial and passionate.
Speaking to The National before a 2018 tribute concert for Hafez at Dubai Opera, Egyptian singer Ahmed Harfoush said the crooner’s minimalism was difficult to emulate. “He was less operatic and more laidback,” Harfoush said.
“But there is a beautiful sophistication to his singing style. At the time, he showed us that you don’t have to overdo things. It is that subtlety that made Hafez stand out. And because of that people paid attention to the songs.
“He had more hits than anyone in that time because he knew the importance of having a great melody.”
Western audiences got a little taste of Hafez’s work when a snippet of the song Khosara was sampled by international rapper Jay Z for the 1999 hit Big Pimpin’.
As a result, a copyright infringement lawsuit was launched by Osama Ahmed Fahmy, the nephew of Khosara composer Baligh Hamdy, only for it be dismissed by a California court in 2018.
The show is created by the team behind the Umm Kulthum hologram concert of 2019