Ninth Celebrity Season of the Symphony Orchestra of India begins this week

This time opera is set to go all masala and spice just like Bollywood films. Love, sex and betrayal seem to be the prominent themes at the Ninth Celebrity Season of the Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) which begins from September 21 at NCPA.

The highlight of the season is the widely acclaimed Tosca, an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini. It first premiered in Rome in year 1900. Since then Tosca has featured on the repertory of almost every big orchestra in the world.

Anna Randine Overby, who has conducted more than 80 operas in her long career, is SOI’s first woman guest conductor. Interestingly, she was born in India and lived here until she was 18. She will be conducting the season with a 90 member cast which includes 32 Indians in the choir. “To choose Tosca for this season is the right thing. Some of the operas can be boring, but this one is full of melodrama,” she says.

Managing a huge cast of 90 members is not an easy task. “You require enough strength to perform a musical for over an hour-and-a-half. You can’t err,” explains Anna. “Being a woman is an advantage as you continuously need to encourage and inspire people to perform in the opera,” she laughs.

Though opera has never got encouragement in India, it has a history that goes back to the 1920s. Khushroo N Suntook, chairman, NCPA, who has encouraged the efforts of SOI to go global, informs, “The very existence of the Royal Opera House (now better known as a Bus Station) is evidence of the importance given by the British regime to opera; but alas it has fallen in neglect.”