The National Opera Association’s Sacred in Opera Initiative’s presentation at the 2023 NOA Conference was a first for the committee, which seeks to provide NOA members with information and resources highlighting the relationship between opera and the ideals of world religions, because it was devoted to exploring works with a significant and serious relationship to Islam. While opera has a long history of shallowly exploiting Muslim cultures, people, or locales as orientalist exoticism (examples as ancient as Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and as recent as Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles and many in between), those that respectfully highlight Islam and Muslim characters have only recently begun to receive far-reaching attention. This SIO presentation, “Theology and Theater: Fit or Foe,” aimed to accelerate that process by examining representative operatic works in which the faith of Islam or Muslim characters play a major role, as well as providing a discussion of how themes or stories from the faith might be portrayed conscientiously and respectfully when religious customs may discourage or even prohibit certain types of visual representations that may be traditional in Western drama.

 

At the beginning of the presentation, SIO Chair Casey Robards gave a brief overview of the mission and activities of the Sacred in Opera Initiative, introduced the members of the committee who were present (Amy Pfrimmer, Jeffrey Springer, Philip Seward, and Lila Palmer), and then framed the discussion that was to follow.

 

The panelists first examined the opera Leyli and Majnun by Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov (1885-1948) and his brother, Jeyhun Hajibeyli (1891-1962). Jeyhun retained the Azerbaijani version of the family name when the Bolshevik takeover in 1920 of the short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which he was representing at the Versailles Peace Conference, left him essentially stateless for the rest of his life, while his elder brother Uzeyir back in Baku found it expedient to use the Russified version of the surname, Hajibeyov. Leyli and Majnun, which premiered in Baku in 1908, is generally considered to be the first opera to be created in the Muslim world. The brothers crafted their libretto from the 16th-century Azeri adaptation by Muhammad bin Suleyman, usually known as Fuzuli (1483-1556), of the work of 12th-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (c. 1141-1209).  This tragic tale of the hopeless love of the beautiful Leyli and Geys, whose passion earns him the nickname of Majnun (“madman”), bears a certain resemblance to that of Romeo and Juliet and is widely known throughout the Muslim world.

 

Hajibeyov’s score incorporates a synthesis of both traditional Azeri elements he learned growing up in Shusha and western musical training he received at the Russian Empire’s Transcaucasian Teachers Seminary in Gori (today best known as the birthplace of Josef Stalin). The orchestra includes instruments from both the Azeri tradition and the standard western European orchestra, and there are both western forms, like marches and the overture, as well as pieces that use the Azeri modal system of mugham, allowing for performer improvisation. The premiere was not without its own dramas (both brothers had to step into performance roles themselves, Uzeyir leading the violins in the orchestra and Jeyhun singing the role of Ibn Salam, the man to whom the unfortunate Leyli is married against her will), but it was successful enough to encourage Uzeyir to further efforts in music drama and eventually to stand up to Soviet authorities in insisting that his newly founded Azerbaijan State Conservatoire incorporate studies of Azeri music as well as of the European canon. By now, Leyli and Majnun has been performed literally thousands of times in Baku. Uzeyir went on to write a total of seven operas and three musicals (although he destroyed his second opera when its story of inter-religious love turned out to be too challenging for the tastes of 1909). In recent years, Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble has presented an adaptation of Leyli and Majnun on tour throughout North America, Europe, and Australia.

 

The second work profiled in the presentation is also a family collaboration. X: the Life and Times of Malcolm X features music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis and a libretto by his cousin, Thulani Davis, based on a story by Christopher Davis. The opera, based on the life of civil rights leader Malcolm X, premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia in 1985 and was revised for a second premiere at New York City Opera in 1986. Although these productions attracted a significant amount of media attention, the work received comparatively few revivals until the 2020s, when it was performed by companies in Detroit, Omaha, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, and at the Metropolitan Opera. The story presents episodes from the life of Malcolm X, born in Omaha in 1925 as Malcolm Little, and traces his religious and social awakening through his interactions with the teachings of Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, his relationship with his wife, Betty Shabazz, and the experience of being a Black man in the United States of the mid-twentieth century. Composer Anthony Davis has said that the structure of the opera corresponds with Malcolm’s evolution as expressed through name changes: Act I represents the evolution of Malcolm Little into the street-hardened Detroit Red; Act II depicts the transformation of Detroit Red into Malcolm X; and in Act III, Malcolm X moves away from the Nation of Islam to a new embrace of Sunni Islam as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Throughout his life and even after his assassination in 1965, Malcolm X was, in the words of the presenters, “an unflinching critic of white power and beacon of black hope.”

 

The characters of the opera are a baritone (Malcolm), a boy treble (Young Malcolm), a mezzo-soprano (Malcolm’s half-sister, Ella), a bass-baritone (Malcolm’s brother Reginald), a soprano (who doubles as Malcolm’s mother, Louise, and his wife, Betty), and a tenor who doubles as Street, a character from Malcolm’s youth as a street tough, and as Elijah Muhammad. Virtually all the vocal lines are fully notated; only Street has a little scat singing. Although the score is undeniably influenced by a multiplicity of musical styles (composer Anthony Davis even gave an interview comparing Malcolm’s rhetorical style to the music of Miles Davis), the composer has stipulated that “the word jazz should not be used in any connection with this piece, including Anthony Davis’ biography.”  Instead, the opera is based on the music Davis started to create as part of New York’s avant-garde music scene in the 1970s, and the avant-garde music group founded by Davis, Episteme, was incorporated into the orchestra and does do some improvising. This group has continued to be a part of performances of the work, including the recent revivals in Detroit, Omaha, Seattle, Chicago, and at the Metropolitan Opera.

 

The orchestra also includes a large battery of percussion, including Balinese gamelan instruments, and consequently rhythm is an especially important parameter of the music. Polymeter is common. Additional musical influences include Wagner, Strauss, Stravinsky, Berg, Bernstein, and Philip Glass.

 

The third work outlined by the SIO presenters was Omar, an opera commissioned from Rhiannon Giddens and based upon the Arabic-language autobiography of Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar from Senegal who was enslaved and brought to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1807. At the time of the presentation in January of 2023, the work had received its premiere half a year earlier at Charleston’s Spoleto Festival and had been performed at Los Angeles Opera, but it had not yet been honored as the 2023 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, an announcement that occurred in May of 2023. There have been several more revivals since.

 

Giddens created the libretto, acknowledging that her version of Omar is only one possible interpretation of the character of Omar ibn Said, about whom there still are many questions, despite the survival of his remarkable written autobiography. Few enslaved persons in the United States were able to create written records of their own thoughts and experiences, as it was illegal in many locales to teach enslaved persons to read and write. Omar ibn Said, however, because of his extensive training in Africa as a Muslim scholar, arrived in Charleston already well versed in reading and writing—a skill that wasn’t immediately obvious to his captors or peers because the language in which he was literate was Arabic. His account of his life was written, mostly in Arabic, in 1831, but the historical Omar lived until 1864. One of the most provocative aspects of the story in the opera libretto concerns the pressures on Omar, from both his enslavers and his fellow enslaved peers, to convert to Christianity.

 

Giddens is known for her work in many traditional genres as a singer, songwriter, and player of banjo and fiddle, but she trained as an opera singer during her studies at Oberlin and says that much of the thematic material of Omar was generated by her own singing. She composed some of the instrumental parts using the banjo, and her co-composer, Michael Abels, did most of the orchestration for the opera. The opera is composed for a cast of eight lead singers (some of whom may double roles), a chorus, and an orchestra, using elements of West African traditions, African American folk music, and European-derived operatic conventions. Musical material is often modal, and Giddens draws upon her extensive background with the Carolina Chocolate Drops to create vocal and dance numbers that grow from roots in the historical music of the period in North Carolina.  

 

Audio or video examples were played of all three operas discussed, giving those present the opportunity to get a sense of their musical styles and how production choices might affect perceptions of the religious themes expressed or examined in the stories.

 

There was briefer discussion of several other titles that referenced Islamic subjects or were created in the Islamic world. These included William Cooper David’s Hagar and Ishmael, to a libretto by Will Dunlap, that tells a story contained in the Old Testament book of Genesis but also in the Quran. Sarah’s serving-maid Hagar has borne Abraham a son, Ishmael, but when Sarah herself becomes pregnant and delivers Isaac, she demands that Abraham cast both Hagar and Ishmael out into the desert, where they are saved from death by the intervention of an angel. Ishmael grows up to be the patriarch of the Arab people, just as the Jewish people trace their ancestry through Isaac. The work, set for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass, and SATB chorus, includes influences of Jewish traditional music and Quranic chanting, as well as a modern tonal language reminiscent of Britten.

 

Mention also was made of two works of music drama made possible by significant investments from Muslim nations, Qadar and Clusters of Light. Qadar, composed by Tony Small and premiered in 2014 at the University of Maryland, was commissioned by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art as part of a multi-year initiative, Connecting the Gems of the Indian Ocean: From Oman to East Africa, a gift of the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, funded by the Sultanate of Oman. The operetta uses the fictional experiences of two young musicians to explore the historic cultural connections between Oman and Zanzibar, an Indian Ocean island now part of the African nation of Tanzania. Clusters of Light, the creation of librettist Abdulrahman al-Ashmawy and composer Khalid al Sheikh, also premiered in 2014, with a lavish production in the United Arab Emirates, under the patronage of the emir of Sharjah. The work is intended to promote Peace, Justice, Tolerance, and Love, the core values of Islam, by presenting a musical spectacle of the birth of the faith through the Prophet Muhammad.

 

The often symbolic and abstract style of the spectacular production of Clusters of Light underscores some of the challenges posed by more traditional dramatic presentations of stories of the Islamic faith, which were examined in a discussion led by librettist Lila Palmer and included points provided by Dr. Valerie J. Hoffmann, Professor Emerita in the Department of Religion of the University of Illinois. Foremost among the challenges is a widely accepted convention among the Islamic faithful that Muhammad and other prophets should not be artistically depicted in human form—a convention much on the minds of NOA attendees because of a recent controversy over an art history professor’s use of an image of the Prophet Muhammad from a 14th-century Islamic manuscript in a class lecture at Hamline University during the previous semester that had generated heated debate from both religious freedom and academic freedom advocates. If the Prophet cannot be represented respectfully as a singing, human figure, how can music drama be an appropriate vehicle for presenting the ideals of Islam?

 

SIO’s brief window for discussion did not claim to provide a definitive answer to that question, of course, but several ideas were lifted up. Dr. Hoffmann’s list of areas for exploration included several that might be described as substitution—focusing on stories and personages key to the development of Islam, but not the Prophet himself, whose actions might be assumed to occur “offstage” and then be commented upon by others, somewhat in the manner of the “messenger speeches” that are common in ancient Greek music drama and have sometimes been used to great effect in the traditional canon of Western opera.  (The second act of Monteverdi’s Orfeo provides one such example.) Building operas around characters like the angel Gabriel, who provided the Prophet’s revelation, the Prophet’s wife, Khadija, who helped him to credit his visions, or Bilal, the enslaved Ethiopian convert whose faithfulness and beautiful voice prompted Muhammad to purchase his freedom and assign him the task of issuing the five daily calls to prayer, might be viable subjects for dramatic elaboration.  

 

The SIO Initiative hopes that this presentation will inspire further discussions about how the members of the National Opera Association can promote our art form’s telling of authentic stories in new or under-appreciated works germane to Muslim artists and audiences while avoiding stereotypes of Islamic culture in the canon.