L’Orfeo to Orpheus: creating an intercultural opera

 

Researchers

David Clarke (Music, University of Newcastle)

Jasdeep Singh Degun (sitarist and composer)

Edward Venn (Music, University of Leeds), [email protected]

 

Duration: 2024 - 2-27

 

Opera North’s 2022 production of Orpheus can justifiably be claimed a landmark of intercultural opera. The work was a radical reinvention of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo of 1607, married to music from the Indian subcontinent composed and directed by Jasdeep Singh Degun. The founding work of western opera now included rāgs and tāls; theorbos and cornetti were joined by sitar and bansuri; recitatives and arias were sung alongside ālāps and bandiśes. The virtual collaboration across historical eras between Monteverdi and Degun was matched by an actual one in the present day between early-music performers under the direction of Laurence Cummings and a line-up of principally UK-based exponents of Indian classical music mobilised by Degun.

Orpheus was born into a historical conjuncture defined by culture wars, polemics over equality, diversity and inclusion, and demands for de-colonisation. Against this tense landscape, the opera proffers the possibility of a peaceable dialogue between cultures in which all the players and elements – composers, performers, musical traditions, cultures, practices – are presented as equals. If this was a high-risk project for Leeds-based Opera North – and for South Asian Arts-uk (SAA-uk) who were also collaborators – the eventual outcome was unequivocally successful. The production was universally praised in the national press; it received the Outstanding Achievement in Opera in the 2022 Critics’ Circle Music Awards and the 2023 Best Stage production award at the Asian Media awards.

Behind the scenes, however, the story was more complex. The journey from initial conception to final production proved perplexing to the end. Degun was brought in as the initial workshop phases had yet to bring a clear operatic conception that could marry western baroque and Indian musical traditions. There was a steep learning curve as both sets of musicians attempted to learn not only about each other’s music but also their respective working practices. And there were debates about the status and proportions of the classical Indian elements relative to Monteverdi’s. The significance of Orpheus thus lies as much in the difficult dynamics of its creative collaboration as in the eventual final work in which they found resolution.

While Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo will no doubt continue to be performed regularly into the foreseeable future, there is no comparable certainty for Orpheus. This risks leaving

undocumented the boldness of Opera North and SAA-uk’s initiative, the creative achievement of all the artistic collaborators, and – most saliently – the lessons learned from the social and cultural dialogues that the production demanded. Hence the purpose of the present project: to narrate and unravel the complex story of the opera’s genesis, to critically analyse the musical substance of the final work, and to articulate its significance as a landmark of intercultural engagement.

This collaboration brings together Edward Venn’s expertise in post-1900 opera studies, David Clarke’s experience as a music theorist and practitioner of Hindustani classical music, and Jasdeep Singh Degun’s first-hand account of co-composing and co-directing the opera. Across the wider arc of our work, we outline the wider context of Orpheus, describe its genesis in detail, offer a series of critical and interpretive case studies, and draw out the opera’s intercultural significance. Like Orpheus itself, our project is intended to appeal to audiences of diverse cultures and backgrounds – whether opera lovers or concert goers, amateur or professional artists, leaders in the cultural sector, students or teachers, or professional researchers or inquiring lay people.