Festival O23
Unholy Wars
Opera Philadelphia
Karim Sulayman
Raha Mirzadegan
John Taylor Ward
Mary Kouyoumdijan
Coral Dolphin
Recitation of the Crusades, through the music of Monteverdi’s Tancredi e Clorinda, the virtuosity of human emotion, unexpectedly anticipated a global protest, and an international summit on the military support of industry from institutions of power, and leaders of the economic world. In Sulayman’s Unholy Wars, Baroque and Middle Eastern folk music is alarmingly foreshadowing what would become known as, media in the age of Genocide.
Opera Philadelphia presented a meditative experience on stage in 2023, set to religious conflict in the period of the Crusades. Ultimately we are faced with this beauty, and confession of the narrator of the story in their own reality. The eruption of the apartheid state of Jerusalem and the global stance of humanitarian activists against this Zionist naturalization into Palestine is startlingly real. The reluctance to speak out against the carnage, and this distance evoked by the Renaissance style of Monteverdi’s expressionism evokes in the Festival O23, Unholy Wars, its World premiere at the Spoleto Festival 2022, honorably staged this effervescent brutality in metaphor. The baroque installation was an epic use of a minimal staging, (graphic projections, sand, buckets, rope, and water.)
Music composed by Mary Kouyoumdijan, influences of Middle Eastern folk music in the genre effectively interrupt, and apprehend the timeless story, Combat Tancredi e Clorinda. The direction of conceptualism in the classical music category deserves praise, and focuses on the relationship of the past, present, and future of humanity. Grammy nominated music by BEST CLASSICAL SOLO VOCAL ALBUM, Karim Sulayman narrates the twist of faith between lovers.
Raha Mirzadegan and John Taylor Ward portrayed the relationship of a love crossed in a mix of faith. Songs in French, Arabic, and Italian depicted the complexity of the geographical, and site-specificity in the Middle Eastern culture.
“Flowers have appeared in our land”
A Multimedia experience, with Coral Dolphin as dance captain to the choreography. Dance silently framed the stage, the screen transitioned from a metropolis of attributes of urban design, that constitutes the ancient scientific genius of urban centers and architecture, to burning fires, smoke with signs of riders coming with purpose to destroy, and finally the ascension of Clorinda into heaven.
Tancredi thinking Clorinda to be the woman.
Exhausted and Breathless
“Angel returns to their hearts into his ear Instead of things, flee the fragrance oil and collapse.”
“That it rose to his heart and all anger died, not my body which fears nothing”
Ecstasy and mourning the death of love. A Smokey stampede of crusaders, a moving image on screen. The Crusades pose “the coming of societies historical delay to intellectual and political modernity,”(Mohamed Sabila: In the Contemporary Philosophical Condition.) The spirit of Clorinda ascending, in the projection art by Kevork Mouad, and John Taylor Ward submitting to the fatal mistake. As Tancredi, played by Ward, he realizes he has killed the one he loved in an epic story of unconditional love. Raha Mirzadegan plays this veiled woman-warrior, the lover and also the victim, Clorinda pardons Tancredi for this tragedy.The nature of their affection transformed to its spiritual form. The message of love in this paradox reveals faith in human affections, and Monteverdi’s expressionism as, “the changes of mind and mood, and greater development of musical means…” (Britannica.com/biography/claudio-monteverdi/Three-decades-in-Venice.) The baroque music reaches toward this higher art, and folk traditions together transcends spiritually over our own mortality in UNHOLY WARS.
