Last year, the celebrated maverick theatre and opera director Peter Sellars approached Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traore with a challenge: would she write and perform a new work for the New Crowned Hope festival, which he was presenting in Vienna as the finale of the city’s Mozart Year, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth? If that wasn’t enough, Sellars added extra conditions. He had asked artists from all over the world to respond to the last year of Mozart’s life, and to the themes that then concerned the composer, ranging from magic and transformation (The Magic Flute) to terrorism, truth and reconciliation (La Clemenza di Tito). Not surprisingly, Traore’s response was to feel “stressed and anxious, because I really didn’t know what I could do about Mozart that hadn’t been done before”.
That may have seemed an impossibly complex task, but in Vienna last December Traore responded with a rousing, experimental show that fulfilled Sellars’ brief and marked a new phase in her career. In Wati, she turned his whole concept upside down by taking Mozart out of Vienna and placing him in 13th century west Africa. Sellars was delighted.
The show, which reaches London this month, is based around a clever conceit. What if Mozart had been born a griot, from a long line of hereditary musicians, whose songs act as a cultural store house for the great west African kingdoms? And what if Mozart had been the griot for Soundiata Keita, who founded the Mande empire, centred in what is now Mali? That may seem a wild idea, but Traore insists there are comparisons to be made. more…
06/07/2007...1:28 am
Mozart and the magic iron bar
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