Issue No. 598
Culture
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8 - 14 August 2002 Issue No. 598 Culture |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
In progress: Searching beauty
Sobhi Bedeir, tenor, head of the lyric department at the Cairo Opera House, has sung Pinkerton in Puccini's Madam Butterfly, Alfredo in Verdi's La Traviata, Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Radames in Verdi's Aida among other leading roles in Egypt and abroad. A student at the Cairo Conservatoire, he left for post-graduate studies at London's Guild Hall School of Music and Drama, and while abroad had excellent reviews and won several prizes. He has recorded for the BBC and performed in many of Europe's major opera houses. He returned to Egypt for the opening of the new Cairo Opera House in 1988. In recent years he has turned to pop music, making an impressive come-back into the limelight with solo recitals at first, and then, joined by some of his students and young musicians, with exuberant concerts under the banner "Sobhi Bedeir and Friends".
You see, I always loved pop music, long before starting my musical studies at the Cairo Conservatoire. At the time I sang in a band called "Les Petits Chats". We were very much in demand, giving lots of concerts, even touring abroad, and I continued singing with the band while I was studying opera. I did both for a long time. That was back in 1980: the old opera had gone up in flames and the new one was not yet built, so we sang at the Sayed Darwish Theatre and elsewhere. I was privileged to perform with some of my teachers, singing with Carmen Zaki, Nabila Erian and Ratiba El-Hefny. In 198 I left for post -graduate studies in London, and in 1986 I was chosen as "Best Tenor of the Year". Good tenors don't come in great numbers, so my voice kept me very busy and I didn't have much time for popular music. I had star billing in around 30 different operas at the time, touring the world and winning lots of prizes. I even went as far as Singapore, where I sang Rossini's Stabat Mater with the local symphony orchestra and an international cast.
On returning to Cairo I had less to do than in Europe, where the opera season lasts almost the whole year. Here we perform one opera approximately every 60 days during the season which lasts only for 10 months. So, after singing the leading roles in La Bohême, La Traviata, Il Trovatore, Aida and other operas, I discovered that I still had lots of time on my hands, so I decided to return to pop music. At first, however, I sang mainly Neapolitan romantic melodies; the French chansons and American oldies came at a later date. Growing bolder with each concert, I finally decided to ask some of my students to join me and that is how my group, Sobhi Bedeir and Friends, was born. We always have a full house, and the number of our fans is growing. We love what we do and people love the way we do it. Who can ask for more? We sing mostly in summer, at the opera's open air theatre, at the Citadel or in Alexandria's Forum Romanum. In winter, while the season is on and while my young friends are studying, pop music performances are less in demand. Furthermore, as head of the opera's lyric department, the winter season keeps me very busy.
I was appointed to the position three years ago. Since then I have tried to bring about a number of changes on the operatic scene, turning away from Verdi's heavy stuff, like Un Ballo in Maschera, or Aida, and concentrating on new productions of lighter operas like Donizetti's Don Pasquale, or Rossini's Rigoletto, which have been successful. We also presented some interesting one-act operas of a different kind, like Poulenc's La Voix Humaine, Stravinsky's Mavra, as well as Rossini's Il Signor Bruschino, Donizetti's Elixir d'Amore, or Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and we closed the last season with Puccini's Tosca. On the lighter side, we had musicals -- West Side Story and The Sound of Music -- performed in the opera's main hall in concert-form.
After taking this job I was faced with the choice of modest productions of a larger number of operas, or better productions of a few. Preferring quality to quantity, I decided to exchange the larger number for the better productions. I was always aiming at beautiful productions with elaborate sets and magnificent costumes, brilliant performers and impressive directors. But productions of this kind are expensive and need sponsors: I am glad to say we have succeeded in cooperating, in this respect, with foreign cultural centres. These new operas gave our young singers the opportunity to perform and to make a name for themselves both in Egypt and abroad. The soprano, Amira Selim, is a perfect example of this, as is the bass-baritone Ashraf Sweilam. And while it is true that we did concentrate a lot on Arabic music this past season, the Opera House had a number of financial problems to solve, on one hand, and on the other, following the sad events in New York on 11 September, a number of foreign performances were cancelled. We had to turn to Arabic music performances: they are always extremely successful, ensuring a full house at limited cost when compared to ballet or opera performances, for which we need costumes and sets.
Let us not forget that opera houses all over the world are suffering from financial problems. Whatever, hopefully our coming season will be richer and more varied: we shall be starting with Aida at the Pyramids in October, which will be followed by a new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, with Amira Selim singing the Queen of the Night. For this opera, we are having a German costume and set- designer, as well as a German director. It will be a beautiful production...
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