FULL JUST SO (Danyal Dhondy) London 2012 Sohini Alam, Felicity Hayward, Rebecca Moon, Dionysios Kyropoulos

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: JUST SO   
• Composer: Dhondy Danyal   
• Libretto: Farrukh Dhondy, based on Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: London, UK  
• Recorded: August 2, 2012
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Sohini Alam, Felicity Hayward, Rebecca Moon, Dionysios Kyropoulos, Ezra Williams
• Conductor: Danyal Dhondy  
• Orchestra: Instrumental Ensemble  
• Stage Director: Jatinder Verma   
• Stage Designer: Claudia Mayer  
• Costume Designer: Buffy Sharpe  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: tete a tete  
• Date Published: 2012  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
• Subtitles: nosubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  Rudyard Kipling wrote the Just So Stories to entertain his Best Beloved infant son and daughter. He created in prose a primitive world of mythical transformations through which a Leopard got his spots, a Rhino his thick skin, a Whale his throat, and dogs, horses, cows and cats became domesticated. Our opera takes the renowned characteristics of these creatures, and retells the stories mostly in verse, exploring them through modern operatic voices and action.

  ---

  A welcoming Chorus conjures a primitive world in which a Leopard tells us things, and creatures were not as they have come to be. A Narrator of those times and climes introduces us in turn to a tireless, toiling woman in a cave, and to the wild Dog, Cat, Horse and Cow. One by one the creatures succumb to the easy life with human beings. All except the Cat.

  There follows the story of the hungry Whale and his pilot Fish who suggests eating Man, which the whale does, guided to where H.A Bivvens (a shipwrecked delirious seaman) is marooned. A smooth-skinned Rhino steals a Parsi Man’s cake and brings revenge upon himself when the Parsi contrives a fitting punishment. Through inflictions thermal, the Rhino turns pachydermal. Bivvens and the Fish contrive to ram the Whale’s throat with a wooden grate and though they succeed, poor Bivvens hasn’t taken the precaution of finding himself on the right side of it.

  The boastfully individual Cat (now all alone) regrets it and is asked to wait till the moon is ripe. Meanwhile the Leopard, hungry because his prey has gone to the shaded woods, is led to them and changes his strategy in colourful ways. The full moon comes, and the Narrator’s stratagem turns herself into a mouse to frighten the Woman whom the Cat can rescue from this fear and be invited to become domestic and dignified. Each animal gains his or her form, shape and nature, and our concluding Chorus celebrates the variety of a wonderful world.

  (Visited 24 times, 1 visits today)