The actual story might sound quite familiar. It recounts the ill faith of a woman and a man, Fadime and Nomad, both from very different social classes, who fall in love with each other but their marriage plans are not well received by both families. Romeo and Julliet are nothing compared to them, as the romance quickly grows bitter when Fadime cannot produce a child. However, after long waiting she mysteriously gives birth to a child. Faith strikes again when the child is abducted to the underworld: a volture snatches the child away in the film, but the opera offers a less violent ending. A white wooden bird flutters from the darkness above the stage, as a freshly cleansed soul, which Fadime then carries to the outside, while the opera gives its last breath.
The opera gives more depth than the film by telling the story from the mother's perspective. For Fadime, the marriage vows are a way to freedom, away from her family, away from the sisters whom she took care of as an orphin, and away from her past. That is why in the opera Fadime is potrayed by two singers, Jennifer Claire van der Harst and Caroline Cartens (with support of VocaalLAB): they represent the conflict between past and present which tears Fadime apart. Librettist Anne Vegter turns this essentially 'wives tale' into something that moves everybody: a story across many cultures. It is a story of loss, despair, and hope, in which every parent can recognize oneself.
The traditional story materials, which have travelled from the still existing practice of folk narrators (or aşık) through Turkish cinema and a vast array of popular songs, lead to moments of cultural memory and nostalgia within the Turkish communities in the Netherlands. One speaks in Turkish of 'hüzünlü': permeated with an emotion of melancholy, which connects Turkish people wherever they meet to a sense of community and motherland. The caucasian Dutchman is an outsider to this very affective sensation, no matter how the content and the songs touch him. The hüzün-feeling has everything to do with a shared past, an identity and a particular outlook on life and the present. And this is precisely the critical point in such a multicultural encounter: one assumes that convergence is possible and that we should strive for something that both communities can share.
The creators of this opera have attempted with the best intentions in the world to reflect the multicultural society. As it is the case in so many European cities, we are getting to know more and more the Turkish communities that have been living in the Netherlands now for generations. And conversely, we see how the Turkish Dutch citizens have become completely involved in culture, education and society. For this project, thirty Turkish women who live in Dordrecht were involved through initial workshops, of which eight women remained. They became part of the vocal ensemble, which was coached by, among others, the Turkish singer Nurhan Uyar, particularly for the modified Turkish folk songs. I dare say 'modified', as the choir was completed by Dutch female voices, all of whom were amateurs in the best sense of the word. This caused some limitations, though it does not show in the opera at all. With infectious enthusiasm and mutual respect for each other, the members of the choir shine. All praise goes to Romain Bischoff's expert musical guidance.
Multiculturality does not have to mean that different musical cultures co-exist in one project such as this one. In a way, each opera or music theatre production could be seen as multicultural since music always inherently carries the traces of many cultures together. Indeed, you could even claim that the choice of Seung-Ah Oh from Korea as composer, who studied both in the US and in the Netherlands, in itself tries to achieve an intersection between East and West. However, through the composition it becomes apparent that behind the many good intentions of the creators to open up to a manifold of cultures, there resides a norm: in the first instance, a linguistic norm and in the second, a norm defined by cultural dominance.
Firstly, the language of the libretto is mainly Dutch. Turkish appears through song when voices of the past come to the fore, like with the character of the mourning woman which is brilliantly performed by Nurhan Uyar. The rather stiff choreography of the choir (by Jan Stroeve) gives way to a Dutch perspective on Turkish folk dance, rather than that the Turkish women had a say on their own movements. An interesting fact is that the women initially had difficulty with the unfeminine movements during the rehearsals. However, the masculine connotations in the abstract dance style could well support the storyline, since they are associated with the crowd surrounding the evil stepmom. The latter caricaturistic figure could have escaped from the fairytale forest of Efteling (a Dutch theme park in Kaatsheuvel).
Secondly, the music is still in a rather classical idiom and instrumentation which consists of a cello, a double bass, an accordion, a flute and percussion. In the music score, elements of original folk music with its specific musical instruments (sas, ud) and chords (including semi-tones) are few and far between. After the show, I heard someone saying: it did sound fairly Korean. Actually, to my ear, it is rather a Korean perspective on Western music drama which the Asian composer has appropriated. At the beginning, the vocal line follows a stile recitativo in support of the storyline quite similar to Monteverdi's tradition. But quite soon, we start to recognize Leitmotives such as the ascending glissando on the word 'free'. The Korean style resides in the rather lucid detachment to the narrative power of the music (something quite usual in post-modern composition).
Hence, globalisation at its best, despite the local setting of the Energiehuis in Dordrecht (a former electricity plant, which became a municipal monument). However, the opera remains fairly Dutch for a mainly Dutch audience. It does not go much further than a sense of loss towards a past for the integrated Turkish-Dutch citizens. The Turkish influence marks a contrast to the Dutch language and Western idioms, but it is not being done full justice. After all, the white Dutchman supposes to have learned something of the Turkish community, but even the Dutch-Turk has no direct access anymore to the original tale, which has been substantially modified through libretto and composition.
This makes me think that the multicultural aim was a vehicle for something else. Perhaps, the story served as a Turkish delight, an orientalized or foreign element as so often is the case in opera, which has to reinvigorate the genre. That was already the case in Mozart's Entführung aus dem Serail. The Taurus Mountains, from which Boş Beşik originates, could easily be mistaken for one of Wagner's romantic woods extravaganzas. The fact that opera died, as scholars have claimed so often, with either Puccini's unfinished Turandot or the atonality after Alban Berg has passed unnoticed to this new opera production: Fadime's final aria fades away in an endlessly scintillating diminuendo, while the flute makes an imaginative bird flutter with which the child's soul takes off to heaven. "You lead us out of the night," Fadime sings almost biblically ad infinitum, which carries the promise of a new beginning. This eschatological promise might sound as music to the ears for the mixed audience. However, in previous centuries opera was continuously looking for renewal, to which the genre has suffered but which also brought about new forms of music theatre. It is quite remarkable that these 'music theatre' makers (Muziektheater Hollands Diep) specifically reach out to a modernist tradition and musical language to translate this Turkish story into a Western opera form, despite all critical limitations.
One of the shortcomings, which Wagner already envisioned in his time through his 'Artwork of the Future', is the promise of a desire for universality: something fundamental which can be shared by a community and which spreads over from the music drama spectacle to the whole of mankind. Today we know that his promise is based on an idealism which needs more than just a critical footnote. But this does not diminish the pleasure of a shared experience. Within the audience of Lege Wieg / Boş Beşik, I did see both Dutch and Turkish spectators who seemed to very much enjoy the performance. This strenghtens my conviction that opera today can indeed still express something in its own right to an audience, even though through its averse political incorrectness.
This idea comes especially to the fore through the uniform dress of the choir, which by means of fishnet hats and turquoise robes had to represent a 'different' society in true Avatar-style. Through the abstractness of the costumes (designed by Ineke Vink), the opera plays upon stereotypical associations of a village community, while it mistakenly alludes to something universal. Moreover, the addition in the libretto of the fictitious Derman-character, the spirit of Faith (played by Arnout Lems), is a poetic pun that combines the words 'derwish' and 'sjahman'. Anne Vegter suggested this in order to add a dramatic touch to the child's mysterious birth. The Derman represents a superstitious, magical power which we do not allow in our modern times anymore: he offers Fadime a child on the condition that after seven years it belongs to him. The rumplestilskin-motif reflects again an attempt towards a universally recognisable explanation. The fact that 'derman' also denotes solution or medicine in the Turkish language is a lucky coincidence.
However, in our postmodern times we know better that universal values hardly exist but are being dictated by an economically stronger culture. Turkish opera is also a contradiction, although there have been many opera experiments in Turkey since the nineteenth century. Surely, opera originated from the West, which Atatürk supported as it became part of his modernization project with the transformation from the Ottoman Empire to his vision of the modern Republic of Turkey. Despite the wealth of classical and modern music in today's Turkey, its musical culture does not abide well with polyvocal opera, which in the modernist tradition in the West is being taken so seriously. Not surprisingly, the Turkish Dutch singers were initially slightly uncomfortable towards the idea of opera. But they applauded the initiative to adapt something of their culture into an opera for Dutch ears.
Lege Wieg / Boş Beşik demonstrates how Muziektheater Hollands Diep is in search of a new engagement with a different culture. This involvement responds to a reality in our society, in which the influence of different cultures becomes ever more apparent. Culture is a reflection of society, the Dordrechtian major Brok claims in the programme booklet. Culture does not only reflect, it is the material basis of our society, I would contend. And this material uncompulsively forces itself upon us through this opera. But just as in our society, the assumption of convergence between different cultures can be tricky.
Just before the ending, the Turkish song Bebek ('baby') comes to a titillating osmosis with the Dutch-Turkish female voices and the Western opera style. The different voices reverberate a few seconds longer through the emptiness of the industrial hall. Perhaps there is something in this echo that may lay in the cradle of a true Turkish opera in the Netherlands for the future?
What? Lege Wieg / Boş Beşik by Muziektheater Hollands Diep in a co-production with VocaalLAB Netherlands
When? 18 April 2010
Where? Het Energiehuis, Dordrecht
A short version of this texts has appeared in De Theatermaker.
Ankara, 29 April 2010
Pieter Verstraete
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