The curtain rose to reveal an enormous sculpture of a horse’s head, equalling the height of the theatre and encased in a cube of LED-lit scaffolding.
This was the opening night of Handel’s Tamerlano, presented by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, directed by Stefano Poda and performed at the Alisher Navoi State Academic Bolshoi Theatre in Tashkent. The opera brought together several of the leading performing arts groups in Uzbekistan: The National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, the Orchestra of Folk Instruments, and the Uzbegim theatre group. The role of Tamerlane, or Amir Timur as he is known in Uzbekistan, was sung by the nation’s premier bass, Jenisbek Piyazov, whose powerful voice perfectly portrayed the celebrated conqueror.
Director Stefano Poda and composer Kirill Richter crafted a new interpretation of the 18th-century opera incorporating Uzbek traditional instruments into the score and aimed to transport the audience back to the era of Amir Timur. The opera also included several new pieces of music sung in Uzbek, which I found to be a refreshing and welcome interlude from Handel’s (somewhat predictable) chord progressions.
The adapted and updated storyline of the opera was equally refreshing. The plot of Handel’s original work casts Tamerlane as the unequivocal villain, who is preparing to set aside his own fiancée to marry the defeated Ottoman Sultan Beyazid’s daughter Asteria, even though Asteria loves the Greek prince Andronicos. Poda’s version was more akin to a legend of Tamerlane I heard during a tour of the Uzbek hero’s tomb: Tamerlane fell in love with the Sultan’s daughter and offered mercy to her father in exchange for her hand. Beyazid refused and, after losing a decisive battle against Tamerlane, drank poison instead of yielding. His daughter, however, had begun to fall in love with Tamerlane and did not drink the poison her father offered her.
The end of the opera was suitably ambiguous as to the real nature of Asteria’s feelings: after reciting a brief speech in Uzbek she joined hands with Amir Timur, surrounded by her female entourage. It seemed a suitable reclamation of the story from Handel’s Orientalist version – one to inspire pride in both its performers and its audience, composed as they were of Tamerlane’s descendants.
The nuance of the adapted storyline was complemented by bare, stark staging and simple black and white costumes denoting the opposing sides in the three staged battles. The statue of the horse’s head and its surrounding scaffolding was used as a refuge for Beyazid’s death aria, a statement of power for Tamerlane, and a prison for Beyazid’s defeated army. The Ottomans wore white, while the Timurids wore black, and when the two met in a staged battle, each side brought forward several more statues of horses. The Uzbegim theatre troupe complemented the singers with their choreographed dances and battles, conveying the emotion and suffering of each with exaggerated facial expressions that added much-appreciated context for those audience members (like myself) who were not able to follow the Italian of the arias.
The crowning glory of the opera was, without doubt, the appearance of the Choir of the Republic of Uzbekistan in the finale. They sang in Uzbek, accompanied by traditional Uzbek instruments, and given the spellbinding quality of both I would gladly have listened to a full Uzbek opera.
Tamerlano ran for two nights on the 2nd and 3rd October, to coincide with the Fourth World Conference on Creative Economy, hosted in Tashkent.
Zenia Duell is a communications consultant, history podcaster and PhD researcher at King’s College London, writing her thesis on strategic communications in the Roman Empire.
