I'm always super-horny for unusual languages, so I'm very excited to have seen my first Azerbaijani opera. Wikipedia calls says that this is "considered the First Opera of the Muslim East," complete with weird capitalization. You can "consider" it whatever you want, but still, as a purely factual matter, this is definitely not true (there may be other examples, but one is enough). Well, we can be generous if we want and assume that this one is felt to have ushered in a new age of opera from the Muslim world. It does seem to be considered a big deal, as does Hajibeyov tout court. Many of his operas and operettas are available on video online, but none with subtitles. However--this is so cool--I stumbled onto this ancient website ("best viewed in Internet Explorer" it says, if that gives you an idea) devoted to his work, which offers pdfs of libretti to many of them translated into English. Thank you, Azerbaijan International!
The story of Leyli (normally "Leyla") and Majnun is well-known in the Muslim world; I first heard about it from this combination of it and the Orpheus legend. As presented here, Leyli and Geys are in love, but in spite of his father's intercession, her parents won't let them get married. It doesn't seem to be a class thing; instead, the problem seems to be that Geys is mad ("majnun"), which confuses cause and effect to me: I thought be became mad because they weren't allowed to get married. Well, regardless, her parents make her marry someone else, and he flees out into the wilderness. His dad's efforts to cure him are in vain. This random emir, Nofal, appears and agrees to fight Leyli's family on his behalf, and they whack each other with swords for a while, but then her dad says okay okay, we give up, but come on, my daughter's already married, which makes him back off. Back home, Leyli dies of a broken heart, and a little later, Majnun does the same at her graveside.
You know, I've seen operas in somewhat less well-known operatic languages, but if I see something in Polish or Spanish (say) it may have some specific Polish or Spanish flavor to it, but it's not going to be radically different on account of its origin from any other opera. But this is something else; I can safely say I've never seen the like. It really it a melding of Eastern and Western music. The singing is...well, it's not totally unlike what you might be used to. It does feature the usual musical instruments, though often you just have one or two traditional Azerbaijani (I assume) instruments playing. The singing will really strike you, however: it's definitely more of that sort of Arabic-style. I wish I had better vocabulary to talk about this, but you know what I mean, certainly if you've ever heard the Muslim call to prayer. Like that. There's not really any recitative; it basically just jumps from one aria to another, with the occasional duet or chorus. It's striking and oft beautiful, although I do have to allow that it can get a little samey: there's not all that much difference between a love ballad and a death aria. Regardless, fascinating stuff, and I will definitely check out more of Hajibeyov's work. This production is fine, with good audio and video quality, although you do notice that the singers, even when they're meant to be, rarely seem to actually, like, be talking to each other. There's a little of the ol' "park and bark" feel to it. Honored to have been able to see it nonetheless.
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