Standing among the assembled audience as it milled around in the courtyard of the Cairo Opera House on Wednesday evening, I must admit to feeling a little skeptical.
The show we had gathered to see was billed as “a unique musical creation that will transform the Opera House into a giant instrument. Something involving microphones, drumsticks and probably a great deal of artsy nonsense, I thought.
What actually occurred, though, was something altogether more subtle, and really quite good fun.
The first indication that the performance had started was a metallic tapping sound from one corner of the open space in which we all stood chatting and smoking our cigarettes. Most people continued to chat and smoke, but one or two curious heads were turned.
Soon there was more tapping from the other side of the yard. As the conversations quieted down, we found we were surrounded by half a dozen ‘blind’ men and women in long grey raincoats, using long white sticks to find their way around.
Then from in front of the Museum of Modern Art came the very faintest sound of a female voice, a long and fragile monotone, gradually changing, eventually growing into an eerie melody. The voice was that of Dalia Farouk, Opera House soprano, standing motionless in a long white dress, bathed in light. Beyond her, a ‘blind’ man was banging his way around the contours of a large metal sculpture as if attempting to decide what it was that he couldn’t quite see.
My attention was then caught by a new sound from behind, and wheeling around, I saw two women dipping their sticks into the fountain, hitting the tiled bottom so as to make a strange and somehow very pleasant watery sound. Moments later, I noticed heads were turning towards a man on a step ladder making exploratory pings and twangs on the elaborate iron decorations around a street lamp.
Before the show began, I had asked one of the doormen where we were all supposed to sit for the performance. Now I understood why we were being asked to stand. We were not just to observe the show; we were part of it, moving around as the spectacle evolved, shifting to find a good spot from which to capture it all on our cameras and mobile phones.
The pre-performance literature had been somewhat ambiguous, but the one technical detail in it suddenly began to make sense: the term “contact microphone. These tiny black things had been secured in strategic points around the building, on its walls, windows, columns and assorted accessories, and served to amplify the slightest sound made by contact with these inanimate structures. Hence the mass of wires, speakers and mixing desks about the place.
Pretty soon, we were being ushered gently around the side of the building, where a young lady was seen curled up on the lap of a statue, while three or four men pounded walls and columns, eliciting booms and wallops that steadily built into a danceable rhythm. On top of the walls appeared more performers, joining the fray with drum sticks and what looked to be scrubbing brushes.
As we were guided onwards, the soprano appeared again high on a wall, while at the highest point of the building, hanging by a rope a man daubed the stone facade with water, forming the word athar, Arabic for monument.
So we shuffled onwards, in each spot being regaled with more rhythms played out on metal steps, glass panes and oil drums. In the finale, the conductor took a cello bow to the edge of a metal music stand, while performers crawled down the building like Spiderman or slid through the night sky on a high wire.
There were no fireworks, but the applause was rapturous. We had not simply been shown a pleasant spectacle; we had been invited inside, and we couldn’t help feeling grateful.
The title of the piece we had all taken part in was “L’Opéra Sonore, and it was the handy-work of French composer Michel Risse. Since he first came up with the idea of making music from buildings some 20 years ago, his company Décor Sonore has beat out rhythms on a circus in Reims, a swimming pool in Rennes, a tugboat in Holland, and a court of law in Paris, among others.
Seated in a quiet corner after the show, Risse explained some of the thinking behind his creations.
“The concept of my work is in a way obvious and self-evident, he told Daily News Egypt. “But to talk about it is not so simple.
“Before you actually experience the piece as a whole, in a public space, with sounds coming from the objects and the characters moving around, it’s very difficult to say what it is we actually do. These various elements are very important ingredients and must be seen in combination, as well as the fact that the piece starts in daytime and finishes at night.
The notion of audience participation is not a new one; it has been much used, and indeed abused, over the years. But talking with Risse, who presents a gentle yet enthusiastic figure as he sucks on a cigar, one can see that his yearning to involve his audience and impart something of value to them is quite genuine.
“It is a simple matter to amplify the sounds that objects make, but this is not enough to explain what we are doing, he says. “It’s not just a matter of technology, not just a sound experience. The whole thing needs to mean something for people and for me.
“We say in French that is must be ‘just,’ which means the work must be tuned into the surrounding environment, the way people live. It’s not just a pretty show with pretty sounds.
At least part of the meaning for the composer does indeed emanate from the sounds themselves. He quotes American composer John Cage, who said that when he wishes to hear music he simply opens the window. Likewise, Risse loves “listening to people and to noises around me. But like Cage, the problem arises when he attempts to translate his discoveries into something that can shared, into music.
In preparation for his show in Cairo, Risse made two trips to the Opera House earlier in the year, and both times he followed his standard procedure of walking around the place, tapping the structures while listening closely with a stethoscope. His activities prompted quite a few enquiries from passersby, with whom he was only happy to share his findings, handing over the stethoscope to his amazed new acquaintances.
“The job is not just converting buildings into music. I love the sounds. But how can I share my fascination with everybody? So I have to construct a very complicated strategy, and a very complicated stage in order to share these sounds, he says.
Each composition that results is specific not only to the building itself, but to its cultural setting and history. And in the case of the Opera House, there was plenty for Risse to work with.
“This building replaces the original, which burnt down in 1976. Everybody knows this and speaks about it, so there’s a kind of ghost of the old opera house around. There always is a ghost in an opera house, and in the old opera house, the ghost was Aida, he says.
“I didn’t want to explain this to people, but this ghost is hidden inside the music tonight. One of the arias by the soprano contains a very short passage from Aida, but it’s hidden.
As for the rhythms, Risse says they contain some hint of Africa, but are influenced also by one feature of Cairo’s soundscape that most would consider to be more of an annoyance than an inspiration.
“Since I first came to Cairo I have been fascinated with the car horns. Ireally love them, he says.
“The problem is that they are like birdsong, which we don’t understand. They seem to say something, but we can’t tell what they are saying. And there is lots of rhythm in car horns too, but we can’t say they mean anything.
“But when Dalia Farouk heard some of the rhythms we were making, she said it was the same as that made by drivers when they want to say, ‘I love you! I love you!’ It has the same rhythm as, ‘Bahebik! Bahebik!’
“I didn’t do it on purpose, but I’m very happy it turned out that way!
Michel Risse will perform next at the Castle of Rivoli in Turin, Italy. For more information, please visit www.lef
ourneau.com/decorsonore
