After 80 Years, an Opera Returns to Mumbai’s Royal Opera House
This weekend marks the first full-fledged opera performance at the iconic venue in independent India.
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The opera is finally back at the Royal Opera House in South Bombay. In fact, this weekend would mark the first full-fledged opera performance at the iconic venue in Independent India.
And the London-based couple that’s made this happen is just getting started. Mark Troop and his soprano wife Patricia Rozario are the music directors for Il Matrimonio Segreto, which translates to ‘The Clandestine Marriage’.
“It’s an Italian comedy and it has all sorts of mix-ups on the subject of marriage. So, we thought marriage, India- yes! We got to have this one here,” Troop says.
The whole show is in Italian and the cast has been trained in the language. But for the audience, there’s always English subtitles displayed above the stage. And although the opera is back to this iconic venue after several decades, the response has been overwhelming. All shows have been sold out for days.
The Return Of The Opera?
Does that mean the opera is here to stay? Rozario is convinced that there is an appetite for opera in Mumbai, but it turns out that while there’s no dearth of talent in the city, it hasn’t been all that easy bringing such a magnificent show together over the last year.
“We’ve had a big struggle finding the money and now that people have seen the show and are delighted and enjoyed it, I hope we could find a few big companies that could take it over, so we could do the artistic thing and not worry about finance.”
(We all love to express ourselves, but how often do we do it in our mother tongue? Here's your chance! This Independence Day, khul ke bol with BOL – Love your Bhasha. Sing, write, perform, spew poetry – whatever you like – in your mother tongue. Send us your BOL at bol@thequint.com or WhatsApp it to 9910181818.)