Alongside eight players from the Opera North orchestra, there are five baroque specialists including the lirone and the theorbo players, and six Indian musicians, two of whom are from the south Indian (Carnatic) tradition, the other four who are from the northern Indian classical tradition. We’re missing the entire brass section bar one trumpet – we simply didn’t have room on the stage.
LC: Monteverdi was very specific in the instruments he scored for. We’ve counted the number of actual strings on the stage and made it 597! Don’t get me started on the time it takes to tune… And luckily I love counterpoint!Ībove: Jasdeep Singh Degun (sitar), Sergio Bucheli (theorbo) and Andrew Long (violin) I’ve always had the two traditions simultaneously in my head, and as a contemporary composer I’ve had experience of collaborative work bringing two musical worlds together. Jasdeep Singh Degun (co-music director/composer): I grew up in Leeds and studied sitar and classical Indian singing but was also part of the school choir, learned the piano and grew up watching Disney films with their lavish orchestral soundtracks. We did some workshops with Kaviraj Singh, who sings Caronte, and Nick, and there was a golden moment when their two voices just were bouncing off each other. Orfeo is largely in D and a lot of the Indian classical instruments are or can be easily tuned in D, and the Raags can work with that. The key centre was one of the first things where we realised there was a similarity. LC: I had a little bit of appreciation of South Asian music, but no knowledge at all. There was a golden moment in the workshop where their two voices just were bouncing off each other. What was interesting how many musical similarities there were between the two traditions. I’ve been involved from the beginning, trying out what might or might not work in workshops. Nicholas Watts (Orpheus): Monteverdi’s opera is one of the first things I ever did professionally to approach it from a completely different angle has been so exciting. ON’s director of planning Christine Chibnall came to me four years ago and said: “Do you think this could work, combining the two worlds of baroque opera and Indian classical music?” I thought about it and said: “Well, I don’t know. Laurence Cummings (co-music director, above, far left, in costume as a wedding guest ): Opera North and South Asian Arts have partnered on smaller projects but this is their first opera.
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