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For our review of Constantinople click here.
If you're interested in seeing opera on anything other than a grand scale (and at a reasonable price), The Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio is the ideal venue. The ROH2 programme based there attracts high quality events from around the UK and further afield, as well as presenting smaller-scale in-house work. At the end of this month, The Linbury will present a music-driven, multimedia theatre event, Constantinople, the work's UK Premiere.
Constantinople originates from Canada and was premiered at The Banff Summer Arts Festival before playing in Toronto. Created by Christos Hatzis, it is inspired by the city, now Istanbul, where East meets West. Hatzis explains "we don't just grow through harmony; we also grow through conflict, and religion and spirituality have a part to play in all conflicts. Constantinople acknowledges the dark aspects of cultural confrontation over the centuries, but it clings stubbornly onto the positive effects of cultural and religious diversity: there is a positive resolution at the end of the piece."
In eight scenes, the work – difficult to catergorise - has 85 minutes of music, words, movement and visuals to explore the convergences and tensions between cultures and religions. As well as The Gryphon Trio, which commissioned the piece, Constantinople features two contrasting female singers – the Egyptian-born (but Toronto-based) Maryem Hassan Tollar, a specialist in Arabic music, and the versatile Canadian Patricia O'Callaghan. It draws on diverse literary and musical idioms: Middle Eastern (including Islamic creeds and Byzantine and Sufi poetry), Christian liturgy, Baltic chants, jazz, pop and even tango.
This enterprising venture plays at The Linbury Studio for just four performances on 21, 23, 24, 25 March.
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