A trip to the Atatürk Cultural Centre (AKM) at Taksim is invariably a bit of a gamble. One never quite knows whether one is in for a triumph or a calamity. On this occasion, the catalyst for my experiment was the premiere of the opera Edusa. If you were anticipating a classical opera under such a title, I must either disappoint or delight you: it is, in truth, a high-budget soundtrack to a film that was never made, featuring a libretto penned by a cultural studies professor during a recess between lectures.
In terms of plot, Edusa attempts to sit upon two stools simultaneously: antique tragedy and heroic epic. The narrative revolves around the Lydian artist Edusa, whose destiny becomes a mere bargaining chip in the conflict between the Golden Age of King Croesus and the encroaching might of the Persians. Whilst the Lydians are busy inventing the world’s first currency, Edusa is caught in the gears of war; captured by the Persian King Cyrus, she becomes the victim of the vizier Arian’s violence. The love triangle between her and the craftsmen Halludas and Kuph concludes in the finest tradition of operatic fatalism: revenge, betrayal, and a collective suicide in the finale, where the personal grief of the protagonists is submerged in the pathos of a perishing—yet ‘culturally immortal’—kingdom.
A Musical Blockbuster
The composer, Güldiyar Tanrıdağlı, hails from the world of Turkish cinema (or, more precisely, TV series), and this is audible in every bar. The music is cinematic to the very marrow. It possesses that specific ‘hit-maker’ quality which is so regrettably absent from many contemporary opuses: as we exited into the foyer, members of the audience were jauntily humming the principal themes. This, undoubtedly, constitutes a success if one’s objective is the creation of an accessible product. However, the operatic genre dictates its own stringent rules, and this is where the nuances begin.
Lost in Translation: From Turkish to Operatic
The primary predicament of Edusa is the attempt to reconcile the agglutinative Turkish language with a classical vocal school. In contrast to Italian, where vowels melt into a rapture of polyphthongs, Turkish necessitates the precise enunciation of every suffix. Witnessing the soloists frantically attempting to cram some -dırlardı or -eceğim into the rigid rhythmic square of the orchestra is not a spectacle for the faint of heart. The text inevitably becomes secondary; the artists either ‘swallow’ the syllables or hopelessly fall behind a melody that was clearly composed in total disregard of linguistic realities.
The Libretto as a Manifesto
The text by Prof. Dr. İskender Pala is a distinct pleasure for those who savour didactic pathos. When the chorus, amidst 6th-century BC décor, chants the word kültür every other sentence, one feels as though one has wandered into an extended session of the Ministry of Culture rather than ancient Lydia. Croesus, performing as a zealous defender of cultural heritage, appears almost anecdotal. His final benediction—an exhortation to safeguard Lydian culture so that it might survive the Persians—sounds like a verbatim quotation from a modern textbook on ‘national identity’. Historical truth has evidently been vanquished by the pressure of the ideological state commission.
The Grace of Warriors and Stanislavski’s Tears
What truly redeems the production is the Turkish State Opera and Ballet’s Modern Dance Ensemble (Modern Dans Topluluğu). Although they occasionally lacked cohesion, their warriors were, perhaps, the most symphonic element of the spectacle. Unlike the classical balletic pas in the style of Spartacus, the contemporary choreography meshed perfectly with the ‘cinematic’ scale of the music.
The acting, however, occasionally evoked the finest specimens of Turkish TV series. The scene of Edusa’s lamentation devolved into a session of sobbing ‘à la Stanislavski’ with such intensity that the vocal performance was relegated to the background. It was thoroughly Turkish, thoroughly expressive, and, to be perfectly candid, a trifle excessive for the operatic stage.
The Audience and the Youth
Staggeringly, not a single seat remained vacant at the second performance. A vast number of young people (students from the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, perhaps?) were imbibing this cultural cocktail with palpable interest. Whether this is the result of effective indoctrination or simply the allure of high-quality visuals and accessible melodies remains an open question.
Conclusion
Edusa represents an ambitious attempt to fashion a national operatic blockbuster. It is endowed with a great deal of glitter, excellent movement, and memorable music, yet beneath this surface lies a rather clumsy libretto and a lack of stylistic coherence. If one perceives it as a tragic operetta with elements of the kültür cult, our excursion to the AKM may be deemed a success. However, we are still as far from a true symbiosis of word and music as Sardis is from Persepolis.
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