At the Seattle Opera, filmmaker Roya Sadat directs a timely but trite adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel, with music by Sheila Silver and a libretto by Stephen Kitsakos.
Maureen McKay and Karin Mushegain
PHOTO: SUNNY MARTINI
By Heidi Waleson
March 6, 2023 5:27 pm ET
Seattle
‘A Thousand Splendid Suns,” by composer Sheila Silver and librettist Stephen Kitsakos, which had its world premiere at the Seattle Opera recently, turned out to be more timely than its creators anticipated. Set in modern Afghanistan and based on the 2007 novel by Khaled Hosseini, the opera unfolds against the backdrop of several tumultuous decades of Afghan history, beginning in 1974, five years before the Soviet invasion, and ending in July 2001 with the country firmly in the grip of the Taliban. The story is about two women brutally subjected to Afghanistan’s patriarchal religious tradition, but both the book and the opera were written during the two decades of U.S. military presence in the country, when women were allowed to be educated and hold jobs. As the opera’s first production meetings were under way in 2021, however, the Taliban reasserted control, making the work’s themes immediate rather than historical.
Mr. Kitsakos’s text deals efficiently with the complicated tale. Act 1 introduces Mariam, the illegitimate, uneducated daughter of a wealthy businessman, who at age 15 is forced to marry Rasheed, a much-older shoemaker, after her mother dies by suicide. Unable to bear the child her husband wants, she becomes his abused drudge, obliged to wear a burqa outside the house though many other women do not.
In Act 2, many years later, she crosses paths with Laila, the 14-year-old daughter of her neighbor Hakim, a teacher. Laila, modern and educated, is romantically involved with Tariq, another teenager. It is 1992, and Kabul is now under constant bombardment by warring factions. Tariq and his family flee, and when Laila’s house is destroyed and her parents killed by a bomb, she is rescued by Rasheed, who sees her as another potential mother for his much-desired son. Secretly pregnant and persuaded that Tariq is dead, she agrees to marry Rasheed, despite Mariam’s fury. But when she gives birth to a girl, and becomes a new target for Rasheed, the two women develop a mother-daughter bond. In 1996, with the Taliban in control, their escape attempt is thwarted. Five years later, when Rasheed murderously attacks Laila, Mariam kills him with a shovel; instead of running, she stays behind and confesses to the crime so that Laila and her children can flee with Tariq, who is not dead after all.
With so much time, plot, and the separate trajectories of the two central protagonists to cover, the opera’s dramaturgy starts to sag over its two 80-minute acts and the all-important emotional bonding of the two women, arriving late in the game, is more told than felt. There are plenty of arias, especially for the lonely, unhappy Mariam, and some lively ensembles—one for the three spiteful wives of Mariam’s father, another for women gossiping in the marketplace—but the music, though tuneful and vocally adept, is illustrative rather than gripping.
Ms. Silver, who studied Hindustani music intensively in India, says that sections of the score are rooted in the scalar patterns of individual ragas; a nonspecialist ear can hear some of that influence in the vocal parts, particularly the occasional passages of repeated alternating notes. The inspiration is more obvious in the orchestration, with its drone underlays and the addition of some traditional instruments: The bansuri, a bamboo flute with a hauntingly breathy sound, sometimes paired with the celesta here, offers a distinctive color in mournful sections; tablas (hand drums) supply vigorous energy.
Roya Sadat, the director, is an Afghan filmmaker best known for her 2017 feature “A Letter to the President,” which depicts a woman who kills her abusive husband in self-defense. Her adroit staging, with sets by Misha Kachman, costumes by Deborah Trout, and lighting by Jen Schriever, reflects some of the complexity of Afghan society and its changes over the years, including Western, cosmopolitan attire coexisting with headscarves and burqas in an outdoor marketplace. Dress is no predictor of liberalism, however: Both Rasheed and Mariam’s father wear business suits at her hasty wedding. The sets are on a turntable, allowing for easy alternation between Hakim’s house, with its bookshelves and sofa, and Rasheed’s more traditional interior, with its floor pillows. Cutouts of the mountains surrounding Kabul hang above, and the lighting stresses the city’s earth tones.
Mezzo Karin Mushegain brought a grounded expressivity to Mariam; Maureen McKay’s soprano supplied a brighter timbre for Laila, though the vocal part occasionally verged into shrieky terrain. John Moore’s honey-tinged baritone slipped easily into appropriate roughness for the brutal Rasheed; tenor Rafael Moras was a passionate Tariq. Standouts among the supporting singers included Tess Altiveros, doubling as Mariam’s mother and a market woman; Ashraf Sewailamas a sympathetic Hakim; and Andrew Potter, whose distinctive height and booming bass made him instantly notable as a mullah, a soldier and Sharif, who deceives Laila about Tariq’s death. Viswa Subbaramanwas the astute conductor.
The timing of this world premiere has certainly called attention to current conditions in Afghanistan, particularly as they relate to women and girls, yet the piece itself finally feels artificial and old fashioned, with all the complexities inherent in the region stripped away. Mariam gets her apotheosis—bathed in brilliant white light, she sings an aria rejoicing in her sacrifice as she awaits her execution—but she’s a throwback to the traditional tragic opera heroine who has to die. I was struck by the contrast with Ms. Sadat’s film, in which a professional woman’s effort to stand up to the entrenched web of patriarchal interests ends in her execution—in a way, the killing of her husband is just an excuse to punish her. The film is a serious examination of what it means for a woman in Afghanistan to actually be seen; the opera is basically a sentimental love story that doesn’t push the art form to its limits.
Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).
AndyManshel.nyc 