Hitting the high note

The opera's coming to town! Courtesy of the Neemrana Foundation, The Pearl Fishers, an opera written in 1863 by Georges Bizet (the guy who wrote Carmen, for those of you not up on your classical music), is going to come to Delhi and Mumbai in late August and early September.

The Foundation came into being three years ago, with the production, for the first time since 1922, of The Fakir of Benares.

The train of events that lead to the production of The Fakir would actually also make for great theatre: it was written by Leo Manuel (which was probably an assumed name) in the early twenties, and subsequently lost in the Nazi occupation of France in the Second World War.

It was thought to be destroyed, until a young soprano, Priya Wacziarg, discovered it completely by chance in a second-hand bookstore, at a throwaway price.

With the help of her father, Francis Wacziarg, she restored it and brought it to the country that inspired its writing "" India. The program me to this 2002 revival included many of the original pictures and photos from the 1922 production, and ran to great acclaim.

"Not many operas have been performed since in India," says Francis Wacziarg, founder of the Neemrana Foundation. "There have been two or three productions, for example, of the Barber of Seville and La Traviata by Italian groups, but this is the first that is completely Indian-produced."

It is not a production solely by Indians, though: the cast comes from various parts of the world (the noted conductor Marco Balderi is flying in from Italy, and of the four main characters, three are French and one is a Korean settled in Italy), but there is a large Indian component.

The 65-strong choir is almost entirely Indian, 40 out of an orchestra of 55 are Indian, as are all the dancers. Muzzaffar and Meera Ali are the "aesthetic consultants", taking care of flamboyant costumes, and Nissar Allana is in charge of the sets and lighting.

Even Francis Wacziarg, although he looks French, and sounds French, is Indian "" he came to India in 1970, and to all intents and purposes has never looked to France again. He even took Indian citizenship 15 years ago.

"One of the aims of the Foundation," says Wacziarg, is to make India an opera destination. "They play Aïda against the backdrop of the Pyramids every year; Zubin Mehta has even performed in Beijing to an audience of 4,000 every day. Then why not India?"

Why not indeed. Given the response to The Fakir, which ran to full houses, there is a large latent interest in western opera here in India.

The Neemrana Foundation is starting with operas that are set in an Indian context, like The Fakir in 2002 (which explains why they've chosen to stage a little-known opera by a French composer, instead of the better known Italians), and after The Pearl Fishers, there are plans to stage Lakme, another opera set in India, composed in 1883 by another French composer, Leo Delibes.

Hopefully we will soon be able to move on to operas that do not have an Indian setting; there is no reason why we should only be able to enjoy what it is assumed we will 'recognise'.

The Pearl Fishers (or Les Pêcheurs de Perles in the original French) is set in Sri Lanka, and has a plot to match that of any Bollywood masala-laden crowdpleaser.

At the heart of the story is the conventional love triangle, between Zurga, Nadir (two pearl fishers) and Leïla. A plot with twists and turns, it involves a consecrated virgin, a high priest, and a string of pearls given to Leïla from a fugitive whose life she had saved as a child (a formula now much used, most recently seen in Pirates of the Caribbean), and a supreme Sidney Carton moment at the end.

Thankfully, there will be subtitles projected onto either side of the stage during the performances ("This happens now even in France," says Wacziarg, "for the language is too difficult").

Given the elaborate sets (there have to be boats floating on the sea, and the plot requires a village to be set on fire in the end) and costumes, the investment put into the opera is quite large.

"The whole thing will cost Rs 2 crore," says Wacziarg, "We have to get 30 people over from France, house them, feed them, and shuttle them between Mumbai and Delhi." They are looking at all kinds of sponsors, including corporations, but since the club isn't officially two years old, this is proving to be a bit of a hurdle.

Despite these hurdles, however, here's hoping that this experiment will make opera take off in India, and that this will be the first in a long line of international and Indian productions in our cities.