opera | Pandaemonium

TO BE TRANSPORTED SOMEWHERE TRANSCENDENT

October 5, 2019 by Kenan Malik

When the US soprano Jessye Norman appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1981, her first choice was Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, with the great African American contralto Marian Anderson. Norman had been ten years old when she first heard that recording. “I listened, thinking, ‘But this can’t just be a voice! A voice doesn’t sound this rich and beautiful,’” she told the music critic Matthew Gurewitsch. Many felt the same about Norman, who died last week. Sumptuous. Voluptuous. Shimmering. Majestic. The descriptions of her voice […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: jessye norman, music, opera, richard strauss

ON THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER

November 13, 2014 by Kenan Malik

In October 1985, four members of the Palestinian Liberation Front seized a cruise liner, the Achille Lauro, in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Egypt. Holding the passengers and crew hostage, the hijackers demanded the release of 50 Palestinians then held in Israeli prisons. They failed to achieve their demands. But, in a vicious and seemingly inexplicable act, the hijackers murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a retired, wheelchair-bound Jewish-American businessman, shooting him in the forehead and chest, then forcing the ship’s barber […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: anti-semitism, free speech, islam, israel, john adams, music, nakba, opera, palestine, salman rushdie, terrorism, the death of klinghoffer, the satanic verses

BABUR (NOT JUST) IN LONDON

June 14, 2012 by Kenan Malik

My name is Mo, short for Mohammed, I’m a second-generation immigrant cliché: Twenty-eight, disenfranchised, well educated. My mother is white, but I’m all Paki. My father owns a corner shop where I work, And I owe my allegiance to global Umma. My nation’s the Republic of Islam. So sings Mo, one of four would-be suicide bombers in a new opera Babur in London. Opera it may be, The Marriage of Figaro it ain’t. Babur in London explores issues of culture, identity, terrorism and history by […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: babur in london, islam, islamism, jeet thayil, music, muslims, opera