Al Hakawati concert film released

WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln has just released a concert film of the September 21st European premiere of Al Hakawati (The Story Teller), featuring Miriam Khalil, and conducted by music director Cristian Măcelaru. The work is a co-commission of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and Orchestre National de France.

Al Hakawati presents fragments from an opera-in-progress entitled The Book of Tales. The opera is inspired by a recent discovery about a beloved story collection: the so-called “Arabian Nights.” The exact provenance of these medieval Arabic tales—properly known as Alf Laylah wa-Laylah (One Thousand and One Nights)—has always been something of a mystery. That all changed in 1993 when a forgotten 18th century Arabic manuscript was found in the Vatican library. It was a travel memoir written by a 75-year-old Syrian storyteller named Hanna Diyab. It recounts how, as a young man in 1707, the young Diyab had embarked on an extraordinary, years-long journey to Europe. His incredible adventures culminated in a meeting with the Sun King, King Louis XIV, in the halls of Versailles. Diyab told entrancing stories to everyone he met in his travels, including to Antoine Galland, a translator and archaeologist in Paris. It was Galland who, in 1710, first introduced Western readers to the stories of Ali Baba and Aladdin in Les Mille et une Nuits—though Galland makes no mention of Diyab. The storyteller returned to Aleppo in 1709 and eventually became a successful cloth merchant. He seems to have had no idea how far his captivating stories had travelled.

The opera connects stories and storytellers across time and place: from the present day, to the Ancien Régime of France, to the imaginary world of Scheherazade. The fragments in Al Hakawati comprise four “scenes” that feature the opera’s principal female characters.

1. I shiver, I tremble
The famed storyteller Scheherazade contemplates her precarious circumstances: each night she tells stories to the murderous Shahryar to postpone her execution.

I shiver, I tremble,
Trapped in a story of woe.
Frightening and violent.
Beyond these walls, this sky,
Another storyteller wanders free.
I would dance with her, my sister,
As the world shares her stories.
A different time, and place,
Another hakawati gathers friends.
I would sing with him, my brother,
As the world shares his stories.
Worlds interwoven with words and wishes.
Another Scheherazade, from afar.
I shiver, I tremble,
Trapped in a story of woe.
Frightened, but not silent.

2. He sleeps, this one
Shahryar is finally asleep. Consumed with fury, Scheherazade prepares to set his bed alight.

He sleeps, this one…
Sleeps the sleep of cruelest kings,
and of wickedness;
a callous and cold sleep, deep.

I seethe, inside…
Seethe with rage that terror brings,
and its bitterness;
with each breath left to breathe, seethe.

I can no longer weep.
The wound is too deep.
Sleep! In a burning keep!
Sleep! Sleep! The righteous flames will leap!

3. Dance of the seven swords (orchestra)
Murjana dances for her husband, Ali Baba, and a visiting merchant. She alone has discerned their guest’s true identity: he is Nadir, the leader of a band of thieves. He plans to kill her witless husband, who has foolishly stolen their treasure. At the climax of the dance she dispatches the villain.

4. For all I know
Tarina Safar, a modern-day scholar of medieval Arabic, has discovered Hanna Diyab’s manuscript in the Vatican library. She marvels at the power of stories and of storytellers.*

For all I know,
a story has wings, that it might soar—
fledged in a mind,
flying from our lips,
flocking to eager ears,
to open our dreaming eyes—
homing to our hearts.
Swirling stories—in droves they take a murmuring shape,
in forms that scrape the drawn dawn—
tracing a truth in the sky.

For all I know,
a tale is a pilgrim, that it might journey—
migrating from world to world,
message in its satchel,
moving through ages,
arriving here—
to camp in our hearts.
Traveling tales—a caravan with load of amber,
flutes and tambour the dawn down—
leaving lessons in the sand.

Hakawati, teller of tales:
the people’s prophet,
the curse of kings.
Hakawati, Hakawati!
Show us the wisdom of things!

*Safar’s character is fictional, but she is inspired by the American scholar of Islam, Nabia Abbott (1897–1981), the first female professor at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. Abbott did some of the earliest research into the origins of the Thousand and One Nights.