Cairo (AFP)

Egyptian legend Oum Kalthoum lit up the Cairo Opera House for a song on Friday evening, for the first time in Egypt and 45 years after its disappearance, thanks to hologram technology.

When the curtain rose on the stage of the great hall of the Opera, the one nicknamed "L'Astre de l'Orient" or the "fourth pyramid", materialized in three dimensions in a bright purple dress , sporting his famous scarf in his hand.

Immediately, the packed room, with a capacity of a thousand people, offered a huge ovation.

Dressed in evening dress reminiscent of old galas, the audience of men, women and young people listened to the song "Hayart Albi ma'ak" (You have troubled my heart) written by the Egyptian poet Ahmed Rami with music by Riad Al-Sunbati.

The holographic passage lasted only fifteen minutes and was played twice to the applause. The singers May Farouk and Riham Abdel Hakim then performed the singer's biggest songs.

"I came today because I always dreamed of attending an evening of Oum Kalthoum," Aya Yassin, professor at the faculty of medicine at the Cairo University of Ain Shams, told AFP. .

"My grandmother often told me about the famous Thursday concerts of Oum Kalthoum," he recalls.

Coming from a modest family, Oum Kalthoum or Fatima Ibrahim al-Beltagui was born in December 1898 in a village in the Nile Delta. Her talent was discovered at the age of 16 and she began a long and flamboyant career.

- "Authenticity and identity" -

A true star of classical Arabic music, she occupied the scene from the 1920s to the 1970s.

His concerts lasted several hours and their live broadcast on the radio attracted many listeners.

More than four decades after his death on February 3, 1975, from taxis to cafes, passing by homes, his voice - a deep contralto - still resounds today in the four corners of the Arab world.

"The use of new technologies aims to attract new generations (...) and to link them to their history," the director of the Opera, Magdy Saber, told AFP a few days before the concert.

Friday's concert, which revives an icon of the past with modern technology, intervenes in the midst of a quarrel between the old and the new on the Egyptian music scene.

In February, the Egyptian musicians' union banned artists from the popular electro musical movement "mahraganat" from performing on stage, deeming their songs too vulgar for this conservative country.

"I am a former soldier, and I came here because (...) I have had enough of what the modern generation offers under the name of art, which is nothing but waste" Mostafa told AFP, which did not wish to decline his last name.

"We chose Oum Kalthoum to encourage a return to authenticity and our true identity," said Mohamed Mounir, one of the officials of the Opera.

Other concerts using the same technology should take place to pay tribute to other classical singers such as Mohamed Abdel Wahhab or Abdel Halim Hafez, according to the Opera.

Oum Kalthoum had already appeared on stage twice last year thanks to the same technological process, first in Saudi Arabia and then in Dubai.

© 2020 AFP