Acquired taste

With opera growing in popularity, perhaps its time for an Indian opera.

Last week, when the Italian opera Violetta, La Traviata was heard on a stage in New Delhi, it had the desired effect — the notes blended perfectly with the operatically untrained Indian ear, and refrained from sounding completely alien. The music almost brought a sense of familiarity, a feeling not as foreign as one would have imagined.

This shortened adaptation of composer Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata travelled next to Mumbai and opened to similar, if not more encouraging numbers, before heading to Kolkata. Just an hour’s performance of soprano, tenor and baritone — as opposed to the traditional three hours of opera — was ideal for audiences which are still warming up to an art form which otherwise works to an acquired taste.

“Western classical singers now see a future here, especially with concerts being organised relatively more frequently than before. A few years ago, they would train here and look for opportunities outside our country because there wasn’t much happening in India,” says Situ Singh-Buehler, one of India’s best-known lyrics and sopranos, who also trains singers in the operatic style in Delhi. She herself trained in Germany and returned to India to find, to her surprise, promising Indian talent in Western classical music, especially opera.

She smiles as she describes the rich melody of the voice of a Bengali student she is currently training. “Many youngsters see it as a beautiful art,” she says, adding that, unlike Indian classical training, Western classical is not subsidised, which makes it more expensive to learn. But that’s not stopping opera hopefuls from locating the handful of trainers in the country.

While star singers such as Elvis Presley, Celine Dion and Mariah Carey are known to have taken opera classes to broaden their range of notes, rock musicians too, in their time, realised the potential of an opera voice which can add much to their own style of music. Experts, in fact, say that a voice trained in opera can reduce the damage done to vocal chords that otherwise tend to get hoarse after singing tough rock music scales.

But, concerts and performances aside, are people now tuning in and listening to opera? A host of Classical Showcase on the radio station AIR FM Rainbow (who would not like to be named) senses that there is a loyal fan following, while others are still catching on. “In my Western classical show section, listeners very often SMS or email me, specifically to request compositions of Mozart’s operas, Chopin, Bach and many others,” she says.

But if the “same old familiar faces”, as choir singer Reuben Israel puts it, throng to the halls, concert after concert, we need to, he adds, “start them young”. He plans to adapt the orchestra composition Peter and the Wolf essentially to help inculcate a sense of Western classical music tradition in children.

So is the time ripe for an Indian opera? It would, most likely, make for a curiously novel watch. “Bollywood is also an opera, isn’t it?” asks Singh-Buehler. Heer-Ranjha (based on a tale from Punjabi folklore), an opera in Punjabi, was performed a few years ago, and now an English-language Indian opera production could soon be in the making if it finds financial supporters.

Veteran music composer Vanraj Bhatia, known best for his work on Shyam Benegal’s films, stands at the helm of this dream. He’s working on transforming Girish Karnad’s play, Agnivarsha, into a two-act opera. Composed skillfully with Indian classical ragas, it will have its music sung in the opera style.

Bringing us back to the present, Situ Singh-Buehler brings out a copy of Act One of Bhatia’s composition, wondering whether a production that needs finances of Rs 1.5 to Rs 2 crore will ever see the light of day. “We can bring in Indian instruments playing to Indian themes,” says the singer-trainer.

A few months ago, an Indo-French opera production by The Neemrana Music Foundation, Carmen, was presented in an Indianised ambience. It was an effort to mark a semblance of East-meets-West. Maybe it was the beginning of a trend.