Mumbai goes to the Opera

India performs operatic art every Friday in the cinema. Music, dance and drama have come together in our country, in the form of Bollywood, for as long as can be remembered. Our cultural heritage (tending towards melodrama, music and murder) has probably played a role in the success of the Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI), which is now in its twelfth season, opening last night with a double-bill performance of Italian operas Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci.

“Drama, intrigue, jealousy and murder — the operas we have chosen have everything that an Indian audience would enjoy,” says stage director, Willie Landin, with relish.

Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci are known in the musical world as Cav/Pag for their propensity to be performed in duality, as they are both short, dramatic, and follow a realism that was hitherto unseen in opera. But can an Indian audience embrace, understand, and enjoy an art form so removed from our own cultural context? And what do we need to know to be an informed audience to an art form that began in Florence in the 1500s?

A 415-year-old history

Zane Dalal, the resident conductor at the NCPA, who is slated to conduct the last two performances later this week, showed me around the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre three days before the commencement of the season. The opera house is the only one of its kind in India that can pack a full orchestra in its cavernous music pit, and with a plethora of greenrooms and a wide expanse of backstage area — which is currently housing a massive facsimile of an ornate, nineteenth-century church (to be used in the production of Cavallerina Rusticana). “Opera is a huge undertaking, and we’ve had to everything in two weeks,” says Dalal, surveying the church set, which is complete with carvings and a fake-entrance through which actors can appear and disappear.

Opera began in Florence, Italy; and from there spread to the rest of Europe toward the end of the sixteenth century. The showing of Cav/Pag is in the verismo tradition, also known as “true to life” opera. “This means that all the action, and the dance and the music you see,” explains Dalal, “ties up together to form one dramatic arc of the story being told.” Verismo opera is sentimental and melodramatic — people drop dead, have affairs and swear revenge. “The one difference between verismo and Bollywood is that if the actor is stabbed, he’ll stay dead, not sing for another twenty minutes,” says Dalal dryly.

In Cavalleria Rusticana (literally translating to ‘rustic chivalry’), a young man returns from military service to find that while he was gone, his fiancé has married another man. In revenge, he seduces another young woman. As the opera begins, the ex-fiancé overcome with jealousy, begins an adulterous affair with her spurned lover. The music from Cavalleria Rusticana may be familiar to movie buffs — it was used to dramatic effect in the final moments of The Godfather: Part 3 and Raging Bull. I Pagliacci (meaning ‘clowns’), on the other hand, recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell’arte (masked theatre) troupe. “In I Pagliacci, we are using Indian mallakhamb artistes — a sort of Indian gymnastics — instead of the circus acrobats in the original,” says Landin. The operas are accompanied by English subtitles above the stage to aid the audience’s understanding.

The two operas were one of a kind when they premiered in 1895 in Italy. The two librettos (the text of an opera, much like a screenplay) swept the country, and the first showing had the audience demanding over 40 encores. An era of imitation as sincere flattery swept the operatic world, and a new trend of short, succinct and dramatic plays was set.

No such thing as an ‘uninitiated’ audience

Dalal denies that an audience can be differentiated between ‘initiated’ and ‘uninitiated’. “Why would someone, who has paid their ticket money (tickets for the shows start at a relatively steep Rs1,200), and who wants to have a good time, want to be told by some uppity people how they are supposed to behave at the opera?” He agrees, however, that certain things need to be “taught” to an audience. Dalal equates clapping at the opera with “spilling paint all over the canvas of an artist who is drawing for you. We paint with sound. In this context, a ‘clap’ can be very jarring.”

The NCPA will present Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci on
February 20 and 21, 2012. The SOI will also present Carl Orff’s concert performance, Carmina Burana, on February 25 and 26 , 2012.