Recording

Abstract

An all-female Carmen for an all-female audience; Verdi’s Lady Macbeth as a puppet; the Queen of The Night aria sung by five singers: these are some of the work-arounds Iranian opera producers have devised as they find loopholes in the shifting official guidelines regarding women and Western culture.

This presentation considers opera in Iran as a genre that epitomises the country’s historic apparently mutually exclusive quests: for global outreach and conservatism, for progress and tradition. I trace the transformations of opera from its introduction in the late 19^th century as part of the Royal fascination with the West, to its role in the Pahlavi dynasty’s aggressive Westernisation campaigns, to its disappearance after the 1979 Revolution, and finally to its resurrection as a new ‘national’ art form. This new ‘National opera’ brings together Iran’s 17^th-century Islamic passion plays (themselves rooted in pre-Islamic Iran), Persian traditional singing, and Western orchestrations and instruments. I question claims regarding its ‘National’ status, but also suggest that compared to pre-Revolutionary practice, it may be regarded as more indigenous than Western, more democratic than elitist, and more accessible than exclusive. 

Bio

Michelle Assay is a Marie Curie/UKRI Global Fellow at the Universities of Toronto and King’s College London, working on Women and Western Art Music in Iran (Womusiran.com). Born and raised in Tehran, Assay trained as a pianist in Kyiv (Ukraine National Music Academy) and later in Paris. She holds a PhD in musicology from the Sorbonne and University of Sheffield and has been a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, working on ‘Shakespeare and Censorship in the Soviet Union’. She is the author of articles and chapters on Russian and Soviet music and on Shakespeare and music, including award-winning articles such as “‘The rumble of continuing life’: Kozintsev’s Hamlet and its distorted reception” (Mariangela Tempera Award), and “What did Hamlet (not) do to Offend Stalin?” (BASEES Women’s Forum Award). Her forthcoming books include Hamlet in the Stalin Era (Routledge), and a co-authored life-and-works study of Jewish/Polish/Soviet composer, Mieczysław Weinberg (Toccata Press). She has held teaching and research posts at the Universities of Manchester, Huddersfield and Sheffield, as well as Rose Bruford College. She has curated Shakespeare-themed concerts, and as a pianist has featured in premiere performances of Weinberg song-cycles and in collaborations with the world-leading Quatuor Danel. She is a regular broadcaster for the BBC and is a critic and features contributor for Gramophone and International Piano.