First came football, then snooker and boxing… and now for music. Saudi Arabia has marked its entry onto the opera stage with the world premiere performance in Riyadh of Zarqa Al Yamama, the country’s first ever home-grown production.
Staged at the King Fahad Cultural Centre for an initial run of nine performances from late April, Zarqa Al Yamama has brought together a cast of international and local singers – and just as figures such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Anthony Joshua have helped to shine the light on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s aim to shift the country’s cultural outlook in terms of sport, it is hoped that Saudi librettist Saleh Zamana and Australian composer Lee Bradshaw’s colourful take on an ancient Saudi tale of warring tribes will do likewise on a musical front.
And for the country’s first foray into opera, for Cristiano Ronaldo read Dame Sarah Connolly. As the title character of Zarqa Al Yamama, the English mezzo-soprano has taken on the task of learning to sing in Arabic, something she has described as ‘an extraordinary challenge’ that has taken two-hour lessons on Zoom on a daily basis.
What is Zarqa Al Yamama about?
Ironic, then, that after all that effort she plays a character that no-one – on stage, at least – listens to. Drawn from Arabic folklore, Zarqa Al Yamama is a Cassandra-like figure who can see three days into the future, and when her predictions of doom and destruction are ignored, the consequences for her Jadis tribe are dire indeed. In the final scene, the bodies literally pile high.
At the opera’s well-received, flamboyantly staged premiere on 25 April – the handiwork of an all-Italian design team led by creative director Daniele Finzi Pasca – Connolly was joined by a cast including sopranos Serena Farnocchia and Amelia Wawrzon, from Italy and Australia respectively, Macedonian bass Aleksandar Stefanovski and Italian tenor Patride Cataldo.
The Saudi ‘home team’, meanwhile, was represented by the likes of sopranos Reemaz Oqbi and Sawsan Albahiti and tenor Khayran Al Zahrani. Bradshaw’s score, meanwhile, mixed Western tradition and orchestration with a strong Arabic flavour, not least in the prominent solos for oud and ney. ‘My approach was to immerse myself in as much music from the region as I possibly could, and allow myself to be attracted by all aspects of music,’ he explains.
What next for opera in Saudi Arabia?
A guide to the history of opera and a glossary of operatic terms in the programme for Zarqa Al Yamama hint at the ambition to develop the local taste for the artform at home, and plans are already in place for the construction of Saudi Arabia’s first ever opera house – a grand-scale project in the historic Diriyah area of Riyadh, aimed for completion in around 2029. On a more immediate timescale, meanwhile, there are hopes to take Zarqa Al Yamama itself to opera houses abroad.
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Some observers have quite reasonably questioned whether the likes of Zarqa Al Yamama should be given a high profile while Saudi Arabia’s civil liberties and human rights records continue to cause concern. Others respond that the opera itself is both an encouraging sign and important part of the country’s ongoing cultural shift – such a project would have been unimaginable as recently as ten years ago.
And can an opera with an Australian composer and largely European cast and design team really be described as Saudi Arabia’s own? Sultan Al Bazie, CEO of the Theatre and Performing Arts Commission, is in no doubt.
‘Zarqa Al Yamama is an unmistakably Saudi work that combines Saudi and international talent,’ he says. ‘It is destined to become a milestone in the rich cultural journey of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.’
