“Conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren, director Sir David Pountney, composer and jazz pianist Will Todd, and six brilliant librettists were at the forefront of the collaborative giant…

This work represents revolutionary operatic theater, using six librettists, two composers, four directors, and an appreciably large team of dedicated individuals and creatives. It could very well reframe how opera is created going forward. Instead of utilizing a singular story or plot, a unique “theme” drew each of the six meta-narratives together and helped form a cohesive parable told from multiple angles….

Set pieces, extravagantly colored sarees, music by Todd and Jasdeep Singh Degun, and dancing by Melody Squires sounded and felt straight out of Bollywood. It’s astounding to see this type of art within the formal boundaries of an opera. Western opera, outside of Orientalist tropes, rarely presents authentic depictions of Indian classical music or dancing within their musical works…

This production, a stereotype-busting panoply of art that returns the human to humanity, invites its viewers to seek the real stories behind the falsely homogenized messaging of certain ideological camps. We should applaud WNO and the many singers, dancers, and creative individuals involved in bringing this brilliant work to life. They dared to poke the beast and enter the lion’s den to better us all.”

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Photo Credit: Olivia Rose Barns at Bromley House Library