Opera Lebanon Postpones Co-Production With Accademia di Costume e Moda to 2021

By David Salazar

Opera Lebanon’s hotly-anticipated production of “Broken Wings” has been postponed to 2021.

The work, which is based on the poetic novel in Arabic by Lebanon’s favored son

Kahlil Gibran, started off as a collaboration in 2019 between Opera Lebanon and the Accademia di Costume e Moda in Italy. Coordinated by Paolo Petrocelli, co-founder of Opera for Peace and author of “The evolution of Opera theatre in the Middle East and North Africa,” the partnership was aimed at facilitating “know-how transfer between Italian and international students and middle-eastern professionals on the making of costumes design for new Arabic opera productions.”

The production team was intended to include Lebanese and Italians opera professionals with the production set to world premiere in late 2020 in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries.

“The remote collaboration between students of the Accademia, coordinated by Italian costume designer Andrea Viotti, and Opera Lebanon is just the first step of a major collaboration that would have created a new cultural exchange opportunity and helped the opera to develop more and more in the Arab Region,” Petrocelli told OperaWire. “Despite all the difficulties, the work of the students gave to the colleagues in Lebanon hope in the future and helped them to look ahead with a positive approach.”

“Broken Wings” was composed by Maroun Rahi, who is also Artistic Director of Opera Lebanon and orchestrated by Egyptian composer Nayer Nagui, the former Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of Cairo Opera House.

“The music compositions are directly linked to the phonetics and rhythm of the Arabic words and this is not sensed by the people who are unfamiliar with the Arabic language where enjoying the Bel canto and capturing the Arabic modes of the opera were achieved through listening to the overture,” added Petrocelli.

Gibran is a famed writer, poet and visual artist, best known for his work “The Prophet,” one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.

 

 

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