The Chance Muse: A Night at the Opera and other Moonlit Music

An astounding series of musical and site-specific performance works took place in the Mother City

All under a Cape full moon

The streets were crowded with revellers - that's Mr P in the foreground

Everywhere you looked were throngs of people gathering

Opera outdoors on a summer evening? How about opera under a full moon with Table Mountain in the background? Now picture that moon shining down on an opera performed within the courtyard of a castle, with singers on the steps and on the battlements, accompanied by the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra

Yes, Beethoven’s Fidelio at the Castle of Good Hope was really something special

A sold out performance on for just three nights

Fidelio was the first and only opera written by Beethoven. He himself said about the work “Of all my children, this is the one… most dear to me”

Based on a real event that took place during the French revolution the opera is set in an 18th century Spanish prison where the nobleman Florestan has been falsely imprisoned by the evil prison governor. Florestan’s loving wife, Leonore, disguises herself as a man and manages to free her husband, but not before the guard’s daughter falls in love with the bewitching stranger…

A lovely crowd of well-dressed people and school girl opera novices came to listen

This gorgeous lady in red was so captivating I snapped her 3 times

As was this well-heeled and beautifully accesorised young woman

The cast was fabulous and about 90% black, which is really amazing. There's the wonderful Nkosazana Dimande as Leonore, Xolela Sixaba and Monde Masimini as alternate Rocco's, Siphamandla Yakupa as Marzelline and Lukanyo Moyake as a jokey Jacquino with Owen Metsileng as Don Fernando

The audience however was about 99% white - probably not much different in London?

Fidelio's message, of course, profoundly apposite for a South African audience. After a previous staging of Fidelio in Cape Town in 1994, previous political prisoner Judge Albie Sachs wrote, “When the prisoners emerged from their cages my whole body trembled. This had been the experience of our generation. We had survived jail, life in the underground, banishment, exile. Our ideas had triumphed. Beethoven was speaking for us in glorious, unashamed voice.”

This staging was really powerful - set at the time of the first British and Second Dutch occupancy, of the Cape - between the years 1803 and 1806 - the exact time, that the opera was written - the exterior of the Castle was incorporated brilliantly into the set - so that it referenced the evils of slavery and colonialism at the Cape. Of course, we couldn't take photos or record the actual performance - but here's a description from someone fortunate enough to have had a preview:

"We were lucky enough to be given a taste of what was to come in the Dolphin Room of the Castle on a Thursday afternoon in mid-September. With requisite heaving bosom, soprano Siphamandla Yakupa sang O wär’ ich schon mit dir vereint (“If only I were already united with thee”) and was joined by Arline Jaftha, Monde Masimini and Lukhanyo Moyake for Mir ist so wunderbar, “A wondrous feeling fills me”, also known as the Canon Quartet."

"Their voices soared, emotions intertwining, filling the Dolphin Room and pouring out of the doors into the sunlit afternoon. I was dumbstruck. As Roland Hudson-Bennett, vice chair of the Castle Management Board said, “the walls of the Castle will vibrate” to this performance."

And so they did. A perfect piece to be staged inside the Castle walls. Christine Crouse, the director said: ’Beethoven‘s opera of dark versus light and freedom versus imprisonment still speaks to us today, in a world ravaged by wars and atrocities. His music reminds us that life is full of alternatives and possibilities, that change is inevitable and that the meaning of music, like the meaning of life, is to partake in it and understand it.’

But that's not all - in the original Slave Church - just down the road in Long Street - a strange perfomance called "Bricolage" took place in which monologues, movements, music, spoken text, dance and visuals were re-used to comment on issues like colonialism, gender and slavery. The performance was attended by dozens of school kids from the Cape Flats - some of whom could certainly trace their origins back to the the period of slavery and indentured labour in the Cape

The director was Sanjin Muftic - recipient of a Donald Gordon Creative Arts Fellowship research project. "Samples from previous productions are restructured to create a fresh story and a new live performance. By developing an original narrative from previously performed material. The multi-disciplinary performance engages with the idea that there is a shared pool of themes and motifs in our performance history. Through the interaction of diverse elements of live performance, it highlights our common struggles in building a home."

Then there was "Cantico" by Jazzart - which we sadly missed - but by all accounts was awesome
and the photo is from the ITC website

"Against an emotive musical landscape, comprised of musical pieces of the dancers’ own choice, Cantico relates the individual journeys of its eight cast members. Cape Town is significant to each story, and the experiences recounted resonate with its inhabitants. Cantico not only tells the stories of its performers, but portrays the City’s dynamic, ever-changing nature.

And the most talked about piece in the festival: "Ilulwane" byAthi-Patra Ruga staged most dramatically at the Long Street Baths at night, with the pool bathed in red and green light - an operatic noise soundtrack rising above synchronised swimmers. Yes - really. "Literally translated from Xhosa as “one who floats at night” - the derogatory term for a Xhosa male who has been circumcised in a hospital rather than in the traditionally sanctioned initiation ceremony. Ruga provocatively links the Xhosa initiation with another rite of passage: “cruising”...."

This amazing picture of the swimmers is taken by the beautifully named and talented SA photographer Sydelle Willow Smith who I think is responsible for most of the stuff on the website - and explores the tension between tradition and modernity

Capeofon by Norwegian Ole Hamre which we saw in both a Church and a packed night-time St George's Mall -was an orchestration of single tones combined into a stunning, multi-media ensemble documenting singing Capetonians of every age and background

And the next night...

Outside the stunningly lit History Museum on Church Square

Classics on Church was presented by the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra

A stone’s throw from Parliament, reverberating off monuments to a darker past, Bizet, Dvorak, Strauss and Tchaikovsky transport Church Square into a mega symphonic experience