Italian baroque and Indian classical music meet in a new Orpheus

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Look back far enough in time and the myths of different cultures have shared roots. For Jung, this was the “collective unconscious”, out of which the archetypal characters of our popular myths were formed.

Take the story of a man who loses his loved one and challenges Death to bring her back. In the Mahabharata, Indian mythology gives us high-born Ruru, who loses the beautiful Pramadvara when she dies from a snake bite just before their wedding day. Distraught, he invokes Yama, the god of death, and offers half his own life in exchange to win back his bride.

That is similar to the Greek myth of the lyre-playing Orpheus, who also loses his beloved Eurydice because of a snake bite and travels down to the Underworld to get her back. His mission is successful, but he loses her again on the return journey (though some versions of the myth do allow this pair a happy-ever-after ending, too).

Could the two cultures find common ground in a musical setting? That is what is promised at Opera North, where Monteverdi’s 1607 opera Orfeo is to be “reimagined” at the Grand Theatre in Leeds. While Monteverdi’s story will remain in place, the newly forged music will embrace both Baroque Italian and classical Indian styles.

A man in a turban smiling and a man in blue jacket in a wooden rehearsal room
Jasdeep Singh Degun and Laurence Cummings during rehearsals for ‘Orpheus: Monteverdi Reimagined’ © Tom Arber

“It is not about putting on Monteverdi’s Orfeo with a different twist,” says the conductor, Laurence Cummings. “It is about the essence of Monteverdi, which is the power of music. That has been crystallised by the last couple of years, when the pandemic took away our essence. Putting these different styles of music side by side and finding how well they come together has been a beautiful process. There have been moments when time stands still, and I hope that will transfer to the audience.”

He is paired for this project with virtuoso sitar player Jasdeep Singh Degun, Opera North’s artist in residence. “I have seen musical traditions coming together in the past, thanks to people like Ravi Shankar, Philip Glass and Yehudi Menuhin,” he says. “At that time, it could only go so far, because they were from such different worlds. We have moved on 70 years from there. There is a strong diaspora of Indian classical musicians here who have lasted generations, and 21st-century musicians are a lot more versatile and open to different styles.”

There is no other European country with an Indian community of a comparable size that would make this project possible. Opera North is using all British-born and -trained Indian musicians, a good number from Leeds itself, who are grassroots musicians used to creating new work from scratch.

The process has been one of continual evolution and the joint music directors have been working closely together. They decided on a fairly equal exchange, part Monteverdi, part Indian classical music, and those contrasting styles have come together, says Cummings, “like a magnetic force”.

Half the libretto has been translated into Indian languages, and for those parts Singh Degun has composed new music in the Indian classical style, taking some of his ideas for ragas from the Monteverdi score. If an Indian performer is singing a particular character, their part will be in Hindi or Urdu, based on Monteverdi in the first instance.

A woman in traditional Indian attire sings while a man and two women watch in a rehearsal hall
Singers Sanchita Pal with Dean Robinson, Chandra Chakraborty and Kezia Bienek at rehearsals © Tom Arber

Audiences can expect to see and hear instruments that are not usually encountered in the same space: the bowed strings of the violin and the tar shehnai, the hammered strings of the santoor, the plucked strings of the harpsichord and sitar and the rhythms of the tabla to name just a few.

In writing Orfeo as an entertainment for the carnival season at the court of Mantua, Monteverdi produced the first great opera by a major composer. Since then, the story of this mythical musician has become a popular subject for operas. More than 60 others are listed in musical dictionaries.

In contrast, Indian classical music does not have a similar narrative tradition. When somebody asked Singh Degun if it would be possible to bring in an Indian composition for the scene where a boatman is taking Orpheus across a river, he could not think of one. Indian classical music is primarily a solo tradition, highly improvised but based on a strict set of rules, and each of the Indian musicians in this production is a soloist in their own right.

“Even getting seven vocalists in a room at once was unusual,” says Singh Degun. “They had been in this country for 20 years and have known about each other, but they had never worked together before. We do have ensemble music, for example when we play for dances, but this is a very different context, especially as the singers will have to act. I am looking forward to seeing how they do playing their characters. Indians are quite melodramatic anyway.”

“We are all out of our comfort zone,” says Cummings. “In a standard opera production it is easy to get into the usual rhythm, but in this process you don’t know what it is going to be. Everyone going into the room on day one felt they didn’t have a clue what they were doing — me included. People needed to come with willing hearts and open minds. There was a spiritual feeling in the room, a meeting of minds that was very uplifting.”

If this reimagined Orpheus is a success, where could they go from here? Maybe the next step is to reverse the cultural exchange: take an Indian myth and create a new opera around it. The experience this time has underlined how free both the Indian classical and Baroque Italian musical styles are, so the fit should work again.

For now, audiences have the opportunity to enjoy the first fruits of this relationship. “It is so ambitious of Opera North,” says Singh Degun. “This is not just Indian tap-dancing tacked on to Italian opera. It is a coming together of the best with the best, and it is great it is happening not in London, but in Leeds.”

Opera North’s ‘Orpheus: Monteverdi Reimagined’ opens at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, on October 14 and then goes on tour, operanorth.co.uk

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