THREE: I will share...music
Updated: Nov 17, 2019
For our third 'SoundUp with Opera North' workshop we looked at the story of The Greek Passion by Martinu.
Today we had our third ‘SoundUp with Opera North’ workshop, drawing inspiration from the opera The Greek Passion in a participatory music and art workshop with musicians from the Royal Northern College of Music.
Again, we brought the workshops out to two community venues in Manchester. We first travelled to Belong Morris Feinmann in Didsbury for our morning session and then to Limelight in Old Trafford for the afternoon.
Our reach this week
*53 participants
*2 venues
*5 musicians
*5 community volunteers
*4 care staff
Positive challenges of The Greek Passion
This week we were looking at Martinu's opera The Greek Passion composed between 1954 and 1957. The opera is about the community in a small Greek village, who are preparing to perform a Passion play. As the villagers are casting the play a group of refugees comes to the village. The opera is about the moral dilemma faced by the community. Some want to help the displaced group, whilst others see them as a threat and want them exiled.
This is a rarer opera, one that is quite unfamiliar to the participants we have been working with. The RNCM singers were unfamiliar with the repertoire from the opera, so they performed music from other Passions, along side folk songs and songs in English which related to the musical 'mix-matched' style adopted by Martinu in the piece. We also used this idea of a musical mash-up to inspire a movement and listening activity, which was very dynamic and a lot of fun.
Many of the participants we were working with were Jewish, so rather than focusing on the specific religious content of the opera, we instead focused on the themes the opera presents- and used the story of the opera to inspire our own reflections on what we value most, and what we would share with others in our community if we could.
To make the session more participatory we also drew upon the powerful chorus that this opera features. The opera often is performed by two choruses, one to represent the villagers and the other to represent the refugees. We played with the concept by diving the participants into two groups, and singing a round so as to in effect create our own double chorus. We also ended the workshop with a famous choral piece, changing the lyrics to reflect the themes of community and unity.
What at first looked to be a challenging opera to draw themes, music and ideas from, turned out to be a wonderful piece that sparked very personal reflections, a lot of group participation and many opportunities for singing and movement.
Content of the Workshop
After introducing the singers and musicians that were contributing to the session, we did an overview of Martinu's opera, describing the plot, settings and themes within The Greek Passion.
We first set the scene of being in Greece, in our small village. We asked the participants if they had been to Greece, and to describe the colours, smells, sights, sounds and tastes that they associate with the country. This brought out lots of lovely reflections about areas of Greece that people had visited, and in both venues someone mentioned the cultural tradition of smashing plates. Funnily enough.....we had some plates with us.
This led to our first movement activity, where everyone was given a 'fine china plate' made of paper that they then moved to the familiar Greek song Zorba. The participants had to keep the beat, and react as the music sped up faster and faster. This was great fun, with lots of laughter and comical plate smashing techniques. Everyone got involved, moving in some way, with some participants being very playful with their plates- hitting their legs, arms or heads with great delight. At the end of the song we all 'smashed' our plates to the floor.
Following this James sang 'The Trumpet Shall Sound' from Handel's Messiah, along side Trumpet solos from Nat. We had many participants enjoying the unique sounds of the trumpet in this number.
We then spoke about the music in the opera, and Martinu's composition style. Because Martinu used various styles of music in the opera, we decided to create our own musical mash-up with movement. Ranald played three songs on the piano, each with very different moods and styles. For each song we collectively came up with a dance movement that reflected the feel of the piece. This was great fun, and many participants came up with wonderfully expressive movements. Once we had decided on our three movements, Ranald then played the songs in different orders- 'mashing' them up. We had to listen and do our assigned movement to the song we heard, noticing when the music changed and changing our dance accordingly. One of the songs was the folk song 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean' which everyone sang along to.
