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published in Dutch on 26 October 2019 in Theaterkrant.nl:

theaterkrant.nl/recensie/tosca-4/theater-rast-stadstheater-diyarbakir/

Theater RAST in collaboration with City Theatre Diyarbakır

Tosca – First Kurdish Opera in the Shadow of Current

Politics
Pieter Verstraete
Seen on 25 October 2019 at ITA, Amsterdam
Tosca is the second hefty, international production by director Celil Toksöz
(Theater RAST), which he produces through partnership with actors, singers,
and musicians from the City Theatre in Diyarbakır (today called, Amed Şehir
Tiyatrosu). Just like in his Hamlet adaptation of 2012, he puts the Kurdish
language and music centre stage, since for decades they were forbidden in his
birthplace Turkey.
Today he achieves this by enhancing Puccini’s most political opera with the poetry of
Kurmanji (Kawa Nemir) and the music of Mesopotamia (Ardaşes Agoşyan). This
people’s opera from 1900 becomes then an interweaving of different cultures, with
a political topicality and symbolism that is never very far away.
With Hamlet, Celil Toksöz brought the Kurdish question already to the international
stage: it was the first Shakespeare-translation in Kurmanji ever. It would eventually
become the billboard event of the Cultural Opening towards the Kurds in Turkey, a
fresh breath after a long period of censorship. Governmental heads eagerly let
themselves be photographed with the cast and thousands of spectators watched
along on big TV screens outside the City Theatre.
Today, however, is very different. The rehearsals of Tosca, officially the first Kurdish
opera, were hampered by the Turkish offensive in Northern Syria and the umpteenth
enforced removal of a Kurdish mayor in Diyarbakır, which delayed at least for now
the Turkish premiere until December. The political climate has completely turned a
while ago and all is being frightfully kept on a tight rein. That is precisely why the
story of Tosca is so significant, and precisely why it is a necessity for the Kurdish arts
scene and culture to be able to retell the story in their own language.
Giacomo Puccini’s opera was already an adaptation of a French melodrama that was
written by Victorien Sardou for the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt. The historical
context then entailed the Napoleonic revolutionary wars in Italy. The play is set in
Rome on the completely fictional dates, 17 and 18 June 1800. Napoleon Bonaparte
enters around that moment Italy via the Alps and fights with his army against the
Austrians in the battle of Marengo. He would later drive the royalist Neapolitans out
of Rome and reunite Italy.
In the midst of this revolution, a tragedy unfolds which binds political intrigue with
love and lust in a kind of operatic thriller. A pro-Napoleonic political refugee, Cesare
Angelotti (Hediye Kalkan), asks for asylum and support from the insurgent painter
Mario Cavaradossi (Dodan Özer) and his lover, the opera diva Floria Tosca (Gülseven
Medar). Driven by jealousy and passion, Tosca gives away the hiding place to a
corrupt Chief of Police, Baron Scarpia (Ali Tekbaş) who first tortures Cavaradossi and

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 First published in Dutch on 26 October 2019 in Theaterkrant.nl:
theaterkrant.nl/recensie/tosca-4/theater-rast-stadstheater-diyarbakir/

then blackmails Tosca to share, one night only, the bed with her. During this
despairing situation, a message arrives that Napoleon has won the battle.
Toksöz saw in Puccini’s lyrical drama a Kurdish story. He had, therefore, the Italian
libretto (by Luigi Illica en Giuseppe Giacosa) translated to Kurmanji by Kurdish poet
Kawa Nemir. Just like in Hamlet, he mixed it with the epic storytelling tradition of the
dengbêj, a kind of troubadours or minstrelsy who travel from village to village to tell
stories by means of music and song.
This tradition exists for decades and was plagued by periods of censorship since the
1960s, which also prohibited the singing of Kurdish songs in Turkey. It was given new
life from the 90s onwards, partly supported by the foundation of the Mala
dengbêjan (the House of Dengbêj) in the heart of Diyarbakır’s old city in 2007.
In the performance, the dialogues between the characters are at times interrupted
by a dengbêj (Özcan Ateş) who adds playful footnotes to the tragedy. He, for
instance, asides that the mean Scarpia resembles slightly the corrupt Bekoyê Ewan-
figure of the epic poem Mem û Zîn, a sort of Romeo and Julia-story of the 17de
century, which laid the symbolic foundation for a never to be reunited Kurdistan.
The epic narrator does not only add wittiness to what he otherwise calls a barbaric
tragedy of the West. He gives us the feeling that we already know the story, and
probably the characters know it too because everything is but theatre: the
misfortune of an impending death, which reiterates over and over again, is then all
the more significant from the Kurdish perspective.
You have probably noticed it: there are many double meanings in this invisible
dramaturgy, which strengthens the original story with an understated symbolism.
Tosca, for example, kills the depraved Scarpia with an ottoman dagger (an hançer),
which could be read as a symbol for revenge for the suppression and historical
betrayal of the Kurds after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. In the Turkish
language the saying still exists, “sırtından hançerlemek”, meaning literally, to
backstab. A significant ingenuity is the interpretation of Angelotti’s character by a
woman (Hediye Kalkan) to highlight the essential role of women in the Kurdish
struggle, although her part in the drama remains rather limited. Tosca’s appeal
(Gülseven Medar) also pales under the vocal weight of Dodan Özer and Ali Tekbaş
who manage to astonish every time.
Further, a rather shabby eagle icon is tightened to a tree: the eagle is a symbol and
mythical catalyser in many a dengbêj-story. The abstract scenery (Eylem Aladoğan)
faintly refers to the wide mountainous landscape of an imagined Kurdistan. But if
you try to read the whole performance as an allegory of political truths, the story
never completely fits. It is rather about big metaphors of power, subjugation, exile
and liberation, in which the Kurdish language metaphorically figures as a refugee.
Everybody can read his or her own story in it.
The symbols rather resonate with a cultural memory of Kurds who can recognize a
part of their culture and, thus, themselves through them. However, you do not have
to recognize all the symbols to understand the underlying message. Everyone can
recognize something of his or her own culture, while the performance strongly
stimulates for an exploration of the other’s.

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 First published in Dutch on 26 October 2019 in Theaterkrant.nl:
theaterkrant.nl/recensie/tosca-4/theater-rast-stadstheater-diyarbakir/


There is a risk, though, that the overall stage image comes across as too artificial, as
a kind of abstract, modernistic, ‘universalist’ imagination of what opera is thought to
be, which is in today’s opera aesthetics rather less appealing. But then I think to
myself that this opera vision is meant to appeal to a highly miscellaneous audience,
both in the Netherlands and in Turkey, which therefore rather looks for cultural
compromise. As such, the staging creates rather distance and, together with the
traditional dengbêj-garments (Fadim Üçbaş), it points in a direction of traditions that
want to be contentious, which is a bold, political choice.
The exploration of the other is particularly prompted by the newly composed score
by Ardaşes Agoşyan, who himself is of Armenian descent. His cultural distance as an
Armenian helps exactly the rapprochement and deepening of the Kurdish musical
experience. In itself, this Armenian-Kurdish collaboration is awe-inspiring from a
historical point of view. Agoşyan’s inspiration lies in many music styles and folk songs
from ancient Mesopotamia: an often unrecognized, lavish Middle Eastern culture
that speaks to the imagination of the Kurds because the music gives them existential
rights against what is generally imagined as ‘Anatolian’ within Turkey’s national and
literary history. 1 Nevertheless, Agoşyan also incorporates western classical music
patterns. Violin, cello and wind instruments make up the thumping heart of the
orchestra besides eastern instruments such as the kemenche and the kanun.
This cultural syncretism, together with the typical dengbêj-type of singing, lends the
well-known arias so much more significance. It brings us back to the origins of opera
in its earliest form, the dramma per musica, in which song, language and narration
stood still close to each other. Although nothing remains of Puccini’s original score,
there are still a few musicological references such as the ominous leitmotif at the
opening and the end, which just like in the original opera, are related to Scarpia or
the theme of malevolence. And there are many musically mimetic parts, such as the
thumping and thrusting in the torture scene, which we never get to see besides its
auditory evocation.
At times a solitary audience member breaks the established opera conventions of no
applause between the scenes. One time a shrill burst of ‘lelelele’ (ululation, as it is
known in many indigenous cultures) resonates through the auditorium, a liberating
gasp of joy but also of endurance, mostly common among women. Then again, a
fragile silence gratifies the stage when Dodan Özer with his baritone chills you to the
bone in the long-expected “E lucevan le stelle” aria, when he extends the such-
loaded ‘Oh’ in time and space, and pronounces: “I have never loved life like this
before.” In fact, this opera version might as well be titled Cavaradossi because Özer’s
voice raises the roof.

1 Verstraete, Pieter. “‘Acting’ under State of Emergency: A Conversation with Kurdish Artists about

Theatre, the Dengbêj Tradition and the First Kurdish Hamlet”, Performance Matters, 4.3 (Feb.
2019), ed. Róisín O’Gorman: 49-75.

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 First published in Dutch on 26 October 2019 in Theaterkrant.nl:
theaterkrant.nl/recensie/tosca-4/theater-rast-stadstheater-diyarbakir/


The expectation that any moment someone beside you in the audience could hum
along or stand up and dance reminds strongly of the authentic function Verdi’s bel
canto once had in the streets of Italy. Puccini actually unsettled that tradition in
favour of Italian Verismo, which, inspired by Zola’s naturalism, sought for greater
realism (vraisemblance) and immediacy of the drama through music and themes
taken from the lives of ordinary people, which were until then not appropriate
enough for the opera stage. This verism is still very much there, precisely because of
the dengbêj who, partially through storytelling, partially through dramatic depiction,
brings the story of common people who usually do not get a voice. Tonight these
voices resound boisterous.

Pieter Verstraete


Credits

Tosca, after Giacomo Puccini
Translated from the Italian libretto: Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa
Based on a French play: Victorien Sardou

Director: Celil Toksöz
Composer/conductor: Ardaşes Agoşyan
Librettist: Kawa Nemir

Floria Tosca: Gülseven Medar
Mario Cavaradossi: Dodan Özer
Baron Scarpia: Ali Tekbaş
Cesare Angelotti: Hediye Kalkan
Sagrestano: Serdar Canan
Spolettam: Mesut Gever
Dengbêj (narrator): Özcan Ateş

Choreography: Serhat Kural
Costumes: Fadim Üçbaş
Staging: Eylem Aladoğan
Lights: Yüksel Aymaz
Director’s assistant: Serdar Geren
Production assistant: Baran Yilmaz

Coproduced by International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA), City Theatre Diyarbakır
(Amed Şehir Tiyatrosu), Teatra Jiyana Nû

Supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunsten, Fonds Podiumkunsten, VSBfonds,
FONDS 21