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<\/a><\/p>\nA new work for soprano and orchestra Al Hakawati<\/i>, co-commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music<\/a>, WDR Sinfonieorchester K\u00f6ln<\/a> & Orchestre National de France<\/a> will premiere next season, with Canadian soprano Miriam Khalil<\/a> and conductor by Cristian M\u0103celaru. The work will receive its premiere<\/a> at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music on August 2nd. A second performance with WDR Sinfonieorchester K\u00f6ln<\/a> is scheduled for September 21, with a following performance in Paris, TBA.<\/p>\n Al Hakawati<\/i> (The Storyteller) presents fragments from an opera-in-progress entitled The Book of Tales<\/i>. The opera is inspired by a recent discovery about a beloved story collection, the so-called \u201cArabian Nights.\u201d The exact provenance of these medieval Arabic tales, properly known as Alf Laylah wa-Laylah<\/i> [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<\/a>. 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 his entrancing stories to everyone he met in his travels, including to Antoine Galland<\/a>, 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<\/i>\u2014though Galland makes no mention of the storyteller. Diyab returned to Syria in 1709 and eventually became a successful cloth merchant in Aleppo. He seems to have had no idea how far his captivating stories had travelled.<\/p>\n Antoine Galland’s journal, where he mentions “Hanna from Aleppo”<\/p><\/div>\n The opera connects stories and storytellers across time and place: from the present day, to the Ancien R\u00e9gime of France, to the imaginary world of Scheherazade. And, though the “frame story” is Diyab’s, the most significant characters in the story are women. The fragments in Al Hakawati<\/i> comprise four \u201cscenes\u201d that feature the opera\u2019s three principal female characters.<\/p>\n 1. I shiver, I tremble<\/strong> 2. He sleeps, this one<\/strong><\/a>
\nThe famed storyteller Scheherazade contemplates her precarious circumstances: each night she tells stories to the murderous Shahryar to postpone her execution.<\/p>\n
\nShahryar is finally asleep. Consumed with fury, Scheherazade prepares to set his bed alight.<\/p>\n