Late last year I had attended a presentation by David Murphy, the composer, and Amit Chaudhuri, the author who is a librettist, at the Nehru Centre in London on Sukanya, the opera that Murphy and Ravi Shankar collaborated on till Shankar’s death. You can read my review of the presentation here: http://www.indiainlondon.com/inventor-of-genius-ravi-shankars-opera-sukanya-previewed-at-the-london-nehru-centre/I had ended my initial review by suggesting that I was looking forward to the actual production but I had not anticipated being invited to a select gathering. Following my review Murphy had graciously invited us to a highlights programme at the Royal Opera House (ROH) this week. The audience was perhaps more opera focussed than Indophile. But there were a number of leading Indian-English families there too. We were also joined by Shankar’s wife, Sukanya, who was in part the inspiration for the opera, and his daughter, Anouskha, who is a sitarist and a collaborator on the project.
Murphy began by taking us through the background to the project and how he had first met Ravi Shankar. Most of this is relayed in my earlier blog. Just to recap Sukanya is based on an excerpt from the Mahabharata and had been a potential project for Shankar for many years. He had wanted to combine Western and Eastern music, opera, dance and animation. Indeed Shankar had told Murphy that he were not a musician he would have wanted to be a film maker. Shankar had worked with Satyajit Ray on a number of projects. Tellingly Shankar did not distinguish between Western and Eastern music nor even a joint project as fusion, but just music.
The programme included four scenes from Act 1 of the opera Sukanya, which I understood has been the only Act completed to date. It also appears that Chaudhuri’s libretto is still in the draft phase. The Linbury Theatre in the ROH has a small stage and at first I thought the sheer range of performers would overwhelm the production but I worried unnecessarily. The Indian musicians, with the shehnai, whose sounds I love, sitar, mridangam and table, took centre stage, with younger musicians from the London Philarmonic Orchestra on either side, the soprano and tenor towards the front, and a dance floor.
I found the entire production utterly spellbinding, and some of the comments I heard beside me included “fantastic” and “brilliant”. Each of the Western and Eastern traditions took priority at times but when they combined there was a driving beat, and it did not seem incongruous, but in fact blended superbly. Equally the combination of a soprano and tenor together with Eastern music worked amazingly well. When the classical Indian dancers came on it was almost sensory overload, one almost did not know where to look. There was also the animations, created by 59 Productions, which were projected onto a screen behind, and some of the transparent walls between the performers. But the overall effect was of a production that was seamless and near flawless both in execution and quality. I am not an opera buff but I could recognise the high quality of the soprano (Susanna Hurrell) and tenor (Amar Muchhala). At times Muchhala sounded like a Qawwali singer which greatly added to the atmosphere.
It seems that the completed production will be performed at some point in 2015. I am anticipating seeing this work, with its unique combination of music, opera, dance and animation. My only caveat would be that perhaps this intimacy could be never be replicated on the larger stage; nevertheless worth waiting for.
http://ravishankaroperaproject.org/
www.davidmurphyconducts.org
www.amitchaudhuri.com
www.anouskhashankar.com
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