The Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting the Bhagavad Gita in the form of a 70-minute chamber opera, “Arjuna’s Dilemma,” by Douglas C. Cuomo. An Indian singer, Amit Chatterjee, “improvises segments of the score in raga style, in Sanskrit.” From the New York Times:
A scene from Arjuna's Dilemma / Stephanie Berger Photography
On the eve of battle Arjuna surveys the field in despair. The enemy battalions are thick with beloved kinsmen, teachers, comrades. His cause is just. But what is he to do? His charioteer urges him to embrace his duty.
Action is better than inaction, the charioteer argues. Nothing is better for a warrior than a legitimate battle. Either you will be killed and attain heaven, or you will prevail and enjoy life on earth. Finally the charioteer assumes his true form as Krishna: time, destroyer of worlds, “the existent and the nonexistent.” Kill your enemies, he commands. “Be the instrument, for I have already killed them.” Arjuna resolves to do Krishna’s bidding.
Written in Sanskrit more than 2,000 years ago, the Bhagavad-Gita, has been called the bible of Indian civilization. It forms a 700-verse episode in the oceanic “Mahabharata,” which in India has served as a source for drama for centuries. In the West, Peter Brook adapted “The Mahabharata” for the stage in epic style. And on Nov. 5 the Brooklyn Academy of Music presents the Bhagavad-Gita in the intimate guise of a 70-minute chamber opera, “Arjuna’s Dilemma,” by Douglas C. Cuomo.
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And in the Washington Post:
Cuomo is best known to the world as the composer of the theme for Sex and the City; he’s also a jazz guitarist. In this opera, he blends classical Indian singing, jazz improv, the busy minimalist-style patterns that appear to have entered the bloodstream of so many composers and the jewel-like tones of a four-part women’s chorus, all worked into a seamless whole, like a golden Indian brocade.
It’s easy on the ear, and very beguiling. I’m just not sure it’s opera. Based on the Bhagavad-Gita, the piece depicts the hero Arjuna about to join battle against an army that includes family and friends; he turns to Krishna for guidance, and learns the secrets of the universe. This is thought-provoking, but not necessarily the stuff of theatrical drama; and while I enjoyed listening to it, particularly as the voices and styles wove together in the work’s culmination, I wanted more emotional depth beyond the prettiness.
[via SAJA]
