Ravi Shankar had the longest performing career of any artist of the twentieth century.
The LP he released with Yehudi Menuhin in 1967, West Meets East, marked the first time leading classical musicians from different cultures had collaborated on an equal footing.
George Harrison, Shankar’s student and lifelong friend called him “the godfather of world music” – and it was Shankar’s vision that brought the sounds of Indian Classical Music into western consciousness.
David Murphy worked closely with Ravi Shankar throughout his last decade to help him realise his vision of bringing the musical worlds of East and West ever closer. This journey included the creation of Sitar Concerto No. 3 commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, followed by the world’s first East-West Symphony, premiered by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and culminated in Sukanya, the world’s first East-West opera co produced with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
The Symphony exists in two distinct versions:
Sitar and Symphony Orchestra
Orchestra Alone
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Video Review
Sukanya The World’s First East-West Opera
David Murphy worked closely with Ravi Shankar on the opera, notating and transcribing Shankar’s ideas for a truly ground-breaking piece of musical theatre which explores the common ground between the music, dance and theatrical traditions of India and the West.
Completing Sukanya was a profound, deeply emotional undertaking. The work serves as both a musical milestone and a personal “love letter” from the late sitar maestro to his wife.
In Sukanya, Shankar brings together all the elements of his life as a performing artist. From his childhood years spent as a dancer through to the growth of his superlative musicianship, his sense of stagecraft and his love of film and the moving image.
The Wagnerian concept of Gesamtkunstwerk – total artwork integrating music, dance, drama, all aspects of stagecraft – was a part of Indian culture thousands of years before Wagner wrote his influential essays. Ravi Shankar saw what is now possible in a 21st Century opera – a cross-cultural Gesamtkunstwerk for the globalised world of the twenty-first century.
Sukanya can be performed in concert, semi-staged or fully staged. It exists in versions for symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra and chamber ensemble making it ideal for the widest possible range of venues.
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Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House
Work in Progress Review
“In fairness credit must go to David Murphy as well as Ravi Shankar. Someone who prepared Mozart under Mackerras is going to be very experienced in balancing the voices – instrumental as well as vocal – in opera, and that experience certainly shows in Sukanya. A video sampler of a preview at the Linbury Theatre of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden can be seen here.
Ironically, when I wrote that sound is God a few days ago, I also said that “It may be my age, but those moments when a piece of music really hits me in the solar plexus seem to get rarer and rarer”. I went to the preview of Sukanya with trepidation; but not only was I surprised by what I heard, I was also surprisingly moved. Completing the opera as a performing edition is a long term project. The Royal Opera House has made a shrewd decision to back David Murphy and his collaborators. Sukanya, with its trans-cultural pedigree and message that there is life beyond Western materialism, may be just the opera to show that Anna Nicole is not the only way to attract new audiences.”
An Overgrown Path. Read the full review.