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SOI brings a full-scale opera plus Andrew Lloyd Webber, only for Mumbai
The Symphony Orchestra of India's ninth season runs from September 21-30 and features an Andrew Lloyd Webber Gala and Puccini's Tosca. Good luck getting tickets
From Broadway New York to London's West End to Mumbai's NCPA. My suspicions have been confirmed: Mumbai has more lovers of classical music than indie kids. And the reason for this disparity is not passion, but cash.
Blue Frog sometimes struggles to get live music seekers to pay a Rs 300 cover for local rock acts. But when the Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) sets up five live gigs (including two performances of the opera "Tosca" and excerpts from composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's most popular musicals), it charges between Rs 1,000 and Rs 4,000. And tickets sell out fast.
The SOI is the country's first professional symphony orchestra, and is based in Mumbai. It presents a series of concerts at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) at the tip of South Mumbai over the course of two seasons each year, in September and February.
This season, conductor Anna Randine Overby, conductor of more than 80 operas in her career, will be the SOI's first woman guest conductor for all the performances. It was her idea to do the Webber gala, "so that you get the 30s and 40s, not just the plus 60s," she tells Mumbai Mirror. And that clearly worked. The seats for all that Broadway/West End magic are now sold out.
As for "Tosca", she says the SOI made the sets here, and the costumes are from Italy.
"Opera is the most expensive and difficult logistical art, even more than film. In modern opera, we also add video and computer art. But for Mumbai, we are sticking to the stylistic classic," she tells the paper.
According to the brochure, Tosca is the story of a court singer in love with a painter. "It's a tale of lust, betrayal, murder and passion, against a plot that comes from the pages of a French novelist, but reeks of a Bollywood drama."
The production will be sung in Italian but there will be English subtitles as well.
Tosca will be performed on September 28 and 30, at 7pm at NCPA's Jamshed Bhabha Theatre. Last I looked there were some back corner seats left via Book My Show. Full season programme here.
