Sridhar/Thayil To Perform ‘Opera Noir’ At Prithvi

We met contemporary urban pop duo Sridhar/Thayil after their gig at the Kala Ghoda festival last weekend and they told us that the setup for their ‘Opera Noir’ would pretty much be the same as their live act setup – the two protagonists and their laptop. They promise that the Opera Noir will be “a confrontation between a ghost and a soprano… a dark Indian twist to opera.”

Scheduled as part of the Prithvi Festival, the performance is “an excerpt from ‘Conversation Mysterieuse’, a work-in-progress original opera”. The opera debuts tonight at 8pm at the Prithvi Theatre, and will be followed by Sridhar/Thayil’s own music material.

We’ve got an excerpt from Conversation Mysterieuse.

Soprano:
The gift you left’s a curse,
Than this no worse.
I don’t trust myself, I’m alive.

How can I trust you,
The dead who left me?
Your light is dark,
I regret nothing else.

Continue reading the excerpt after the jump.

Ghost:
Say your life breaks down.
Your engine dies in a town
In the south far from the sea.
You are not me.

You are a naked soprano, in a room
Where your own high note
Keeps you numb and afloat,
Keeps your mind from ticking.

Easy to let yourself go.
Give up, slide into blue,
After all, you’re new
At this, you don’t know you know.

You don’t know your ghost waits for you

Where the water is cold and clean
And you can dream.

Maybe you’re afraid.
The world is sick and you are afraid

The worst has already happened.

Soprano:
I demand my rights as a man, as a mouse.
I want to speak to God, is he in the house?
Stand up if you’re here and look me in the eye.
Here’s my question for you, in a word: Why?

Ghost:
Because he can.
Because nobody else can.
Because he has no choice.
Because it’s his way of translating the world into human language.
Because he’s everywhere and visibility is his curse.
Because he won’t change his mind so late in the game.
Because guilt is good.
Because death resolves nothing: resentments don’t disappear, they grow.
Because everyone’s listening but no one can see.
Because he’s addicted to luxury and filth.
Because it’s his way of proving the Universal Law of Diminishment.
Because he’s making up for his absence in our formative years.
Because he needs the attention.
Because the rich deserve their riches and the poor like to sing.
Because some night in a dream I’ll come back to say goodbye.