A romance with musicals which started with Jesus Christ Super Star a few years back, is coming back. JCSS was brilliant – amazing music, amazing lyrics, very interesting characters – a very interesting shift of perspective. Very cool. I remember watching JCSS completely for the first time at Deepak’s place back at Bangalore – at one of our many of dinner + music sessions where Deepak would treat us to the pleasures of the local vegetarian home delivery service and his beautiful taste in music.

If you have not watched JCSS, it is highly recommended –

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275434/

Since coming to Cambridge I have had a chance to sample many interesting things – vintage wines, abstract mathematical models such as pi calculus and category theory, involved pieces of software such as the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, programming paradigms such as STM and monadic yield, London, beautiful medieval cathedrals, beer festivals etc and some musicals.

Its the musicals that this entry is about. A few weeks I got to watch Rigoletto the opera – a live performance at the “Cambridge Corn Exchange”. I had originally expecting nothing – only by the mild curiosity that the brochure was and also intending to sample the often heard “stiff upper lip” British formal occasion.

What I saw were a lot nicely dressed older people who were very polite and very at-ease. Rigoletto was in Italian with English subtitles displayed on a screen above the stage. As I watched Rigoletto, minor details like there actually nude women on the stage got swept aside and the power of music and metaphors started to take over. I started not to notice the gasps from the audience about the directness of presentation and more on what would be going through these characters in the play, if it was all real.

After I left the opera, one of the last pieces “La donna e mobile” played in my mind for days afterwards. This is an English approximation of “La donna e mobile”

Woman is unpredictable, like a feather in the wind,

she changes her voice, and her thoughts

Always a sweet, pretty face,

in tears or in laughter, always lying

Woman is unpredictable, like a feather in the wind,

she changes her voice, and her thoughts

and her thoughts, and her thoughts

Always miserable, he that trusts in her

who confides in her, his unwary heart!

Yet nobody feels fully happy

who on that bosom doesn't drink love,

Woman is unpredictable, like a feather in the wind,

she changes her voice, and her thoughts

and her thoughts, and her thoughts!

This is being sung by an overly licentious Duke who is about to be murdered by an assassin paid by the jester of the Duke’s court. The assassin’s sister who usually woos his victim’s for him such that he can stab them when they are distracted now pleads with him to spare the Duke’s life. The assassin consents on the condition that someone else should come through the door who he will murder instead of the Duke. The jester wanted the Duke killed because he had dishonored his daughter. The jester’s daughter however overhears the conversation between the assassin and his sister and decides to sacrifices herself to save the Duke, despite knowing that he had cheated her. As all this unfolds one can hear the Duke singing in his room awaiting his mistress for the night, the assassin’s sister. Its delicate and is one of those climaxes that’s not easy to forget.

Beautiful.

Two days back I saw the Phantom of the Opera – honestly I don’t have many ways to describe this other than that it sent me reeling ever so often. Its brilliant, its powerful and it is so exquisitely done. Its one of those things that one has to put on their “to do list before you die”. As you watch the Phantom of the Opera so many layers unfold. It one of those things that awoke many sleeping ghosts in my mind.

In sleep he sang to me,

In dreams he came,

That voice which calls to me,

And speaks my name.

And do I dream again?

For now I find.

The Phantom of the Opera is there-

Inside my mind.

This is the version I saw -

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293508/

Many tracks in the Phantom of the Opera hit you with the raw pathos comparable with Mukesh Chand Mathur (aka Mukesh) singing “Dost dost na raha” in Sangam or “Baharon Phool Barsao” of Mohammed Rafi in Suraj. Brilliant.

In short, I am hooked. Any suggestions for what I can watch next? I know that comparing with Verdi’s Rigoletto or Andrew Loyd Weber’s JCSS or Phantom of the Opera is a tall order – I don’t expect it to. I just want to sample some more real music.