A Thai challenge to 'The Ring'

WITH THE THIRD in his planned cycle of 10 operas opening on Friday at the Thailand Cultural Centre, composer Somtow Sucharitkul us drawing nearer to challenging Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle for its place in the Guinness Book of Records as history’s most complex work of classical opera.
For more than a century, the German maestro’s Ring Cycle has represented the Mount Everest of classical music, four monumental operas performed on four successive days. To the German people they comprise a form of cultural identity, albeit one with a frighteningly apocalyptic climax – Norse gods, whooping Valkyries and ultimately the destruction of the universe in a flaming apocalypse.
There is a 10-year waiting list for tickets to the annual performances of the Ring Cycle at the Bayreuth Festival, while New York’s Metropolitan Opera spent $19.6 million (Bt665 million) on its most recent production.
Somtow, who is also a sci-fi author and as such brings his own cosmic vision to his music, has announced that his previous works “The Silent Prince” and “Mahajanaka” now represent the first two pieces of a planned cycle of 10 operas about the Dasjati (Tossachat) jatakas that chronicle the 10 lives of the Lord Buddha. Reaction from the operatic world has been enthusiastic, even with seven of the 10 pieces still unseen. If Somtow manages to complete the cycle, it would not only usurp The Ring’s Guinness record but require much longer than four evenings for a complete performance.
The third work, “Bhuridat”, premiering on Friday, takes as its source one of the most colourful of the Buddha’s 10 incarnations. It’s the story of a boddhisatva is incarnated as a naga prince who is captured by Alambayana, a cruel Brahmin snake-charmer, and forced to perform to the trickster’s pipe in village squares and towns until – after a Harry Potter-like magic duel between his captor and Sudassana, a dragon prince – he is finally liberated.
“Comparisons with ‘The Ring’ are inevitable,” Somtow says, “but really the Dasjati cycle is a completely different sort of creature. Each of the 10 operas will be a complete story in itself, and each of the original tales actually has as much complexity as the entire Ring Cycle anyway. So I’ve come up with storytelling techniques that are modern, and that include other media, such as dance and puppetry. Together the 10 works will make up a fast-moving, almost cinematic panorama of the Buddhist mythology.”
Somtow believes he’s entering “the final phase of my career” and that it’s time for him to create one big, final work as a gift to the next generation, just as one newspaper reviewing “The Silent Prince” following its 2010 premiere in Houston, Texas, called it “a gift to the world”.
“In five years’ time,” Somtow promises, “all 10 of the operas will be performed as a complete cycle at a huge Dasjati festival, and as long as this festival is renewed every few years it will provide employment and a source for innovation and reinterpretation for artists, singers, dancers, directors, musicians and set designers for generations to come.”
Financing a project this size is a challenge, Somtow acknowledges.
“In the past, support for opera in this country has been two-pronged: At first there was corporate support, and more recently the government has stepped up and chipped in quite a bit. But, for a project like this, which really exists to help the whole country in terms of religious education, tourism enhancement, employment for artists and popularising our culture, we need a three-legged stool – two legs is unstable. So this will be one of the first projects of this kind to also use crowdfunding as a third source of revenue.”
Somtow estimates the cost at Bt150 million for the entire enterprise, from the inception of the first opera five years ago to the launch of the festival in 2020. “Is it a lot of money?” he muses. “When you consider that the Met in New York has been known to spend that much on just one production, I think it’s very cheap, considering the immense benefit to the country.”
Through the social networks and crowdfunding, Somtow has raised about Bt1 million in annual pledges just in the last month. Thai donations have been substantial, he says, but he’s saddened that those coming from overseas – 70 per cent of the total thus far – are small. “I would love for everyone to feel part of this project, which really focuses world attention on Thailand in an exciting new way,” he says. “So, even if you pledge the least amount, Bt1,000 a year – which is just Bt3 a day – it is meaningful and it is important. It is a real act of tam boon [making merit] that will keep on giving for generations.”
Asked whether he has any misgivings about “taking on Wagner” – and perhaps the world operatic establishment as well – Somtow says his only fear is “not living long enough to finish it all”.
“I’m trying hard to lose weight!” he laughs.

On the Web: www.Dasjati.com