informations

An Indian Night’s Dream
cast
Pandit Shyam Sundar Goswami, singing
Cyrille Gerstenhaber, soprano
tabla
sarengi
anpura
viole de gambe
théorbe
Jean-Christophe Frisch, flutes and direction
Program
Michel Lambert
Traditionnel indien
Marin Marais
Indian traditional
Jacques Morel
Sébastien Le Camus
Michel Lambert
Indian traditional
Ombre de mon amant
Raga Bihag
La Rêveuse –l’Arabesque
Raga Darbari
Chaconne
Laissez durer la nuit
Vos mépris chaque jour
Semi-classical
1720. Joseph François Dupleix is appointed superintendent of Chandernagore, on the banks of the
Ganges, sacred river of Bengal. Politic and strategist,
he’ll soon become governor-general of the French India. At the same time, he was a great musician, played
viola da gamba. His scores library was found again,
and we can imagine which works by Lully, Couperin
and Marin Marais had been heard by Hindu or Mughal
princes he welcomed and who, at their turn, offered
him concerts.
For French people moving to Bengal, that land was
the land of the night, personified by Kali, terrible and
fascinating goddess, which dark beauty frightens and
seduces. Mentioned by Marguerite Yourcenar in one
of her Oriental tales, she’s at the same time goddess
of love and of decline. She’s also seen as a metaphor
of art, which burns the ones who adore it but cannot
live without. Night and dreams are also in the center of
Bengali singer Pandit Shyam Sundar Goswami’s work.
That exceptional artist aims at finding again ancient
Hindustani traditions, corresponding to Dupleix’s time,
but in a typical Indian way: he dreams more than he
reconstructs, he gets himself carried away by his interior musicality and his spirituality. Thanks to the ancient songs in Sanskrit he’s singing and declaiming, he
creates an imaginary universe, the one of a distant and
mysterious past. That past of the oneiric encounter
between the Bengali night and the Enlightened.
Video extract: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xliyvo_le-songe-d-une-nuitindienne_
Profane version : airs de cour et castagnettes... Program also created around a profane repertoire with rjasthanis artists living
in France. More details upon request.
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