Sivan Eldar in Studio
Nine Jewelled Opera | Artistic Issues
In a dense forest, a man is drowning. Attracted by the sound, a deer comes to save him. Full of gratitude, the man goes back to his village where he learns that, alas, the Queen has dreamt of a magical deer, and that it needs to be captured to restore the kingdom’s prosperity. The man therefore has to deal with a conflict of loyalties: either join the hunt or convince the King to let the deer go. The legend of the Nine Jewelled Deer came to us in the shape of a mural, painted between the 4th and the 6th century in the Western Thousand Buddha Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China. These caves have been a source of fascination for stage director Peter Sellars for many years, to the point of organizing visits with artists from all around the world. Amongst his guests, was Indian American singer Ganavya Doraiswamy.
Sometime later, in an Italian palazzo, that same Ganavya attended a presentation of Sivan Eldar’s first opera, Like Flesh, during which she mentioned Heave, a piece she wrote at IRCAM in 2018. “When I was writing the part for the electronics, I recorded a series of barely perceptible sounds to train the sample based-sound synthesis models, such as the squishy insides of a fruit or a vegetable or the slimy texture of a piece of meat or a fish…”, the composer tells us. “After my presentation, Ganavya told me of her grandmother and her ‘kitchen orchestra’.”
Répétitions de The Nine Jewelled Deer de Sivan Eldar et Ganavya Doraiswamy – Création mondiale - Mise en scène Peter Sellars – Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2025 © Ruth Walz
Seetha Doraiswamy, a legend of Carnatic music, had the custom of inviting women into her kitchen, so that they could share their most difficult stories. Together, they transformed those painful memories into poetry, pairing their tales with instruments they found around the kitchen, like various utensils and seeds. “Ganavya was seduced by the way I had in transformed my own ‘cooking’ into musical textures. In a way, my samples were becoming whole worlds of sounds, carrying their own meaning. It reminded her of the way she and her grandmother explored the ordinary to transform it into something transcendental.”
The exchanges between the two musicians carried on like this until it was Sivan’s turn to meet Peter Sellars. A few months later, the three artists met at Sellars’ place in Los Angeles for their first creative residency. It’s during that time that the legend of the Nine Jeweled Deer resurfaced, alongside other texts and poems revolving around similar topics: the manifestation of the divine in everyday life, the dangers of propriety, the equality of all things. That being said, unlike her usual practice, the composer is not working with a pre-written libretto. Eldar explains, “The idea wasn’t to use these texts to make a libretto. Peter encouraged me to start writing without one – and to let myself be guided by the topics we explored together. According to him, the plot will later be read into, or gathered from, the music. Once the music has been written, we’ll listen to it, try to understand its nature and infer the kind of storytelling it needs.”
Following that directive, they decided to use the legend of the Nine Jeweled Deer as a story arc: a storytelling mechanism that knits together the musical imagery of the piece. Now that the text became secondary in the process, Sivan Eldar wished to involve the instruments in the making of the dramaturgy on the same level as the voices. They will even sometimes serve as narrators that will push the ‘plot’ onwards. “For instance, the prologue features a duo made up of Ganavya and the altoist Nurit Stark, who tells the story of the deer. When Ganavya leaves the stage, Nurit leads us into the heart of the forest where the deer lives, the forest itself being interpreted by the saxophone, played by Hayden Chisholm… and so forth. The opera is made up of a succession of musical scenes.”
The casting for the seven soloists was carried on very carefully. One of the main characteristics of that opera is the unusual diversity of the artists involved. “Ganavya is a composer and a poet, with an in-depth knowledge of Southern Indian music and jazz, but also in ethnomusicology and in critical theory… Aruna Sairam is a legend of Carnatic music and is famous for breaking free from the boundaries between sacred and profane repertoires. The same goes for the instrumental ensemble, each member of which has a unique musical background. This means that I needed to write specifically for each of them.”
The final challenge concerned assembling these different musical universes into something coherent. Eldar specifies, “I don’t want to write pseudo-Indian music, pseudo-jazz or pseudo-world music. My method relies on dialogue. The idea is to create situations that lead them to explore their practice from a different angle and through new juxtapositions. The composition process evolves on two intersecting planes with some fixed elements and space for freedom. I try to adjust both in relation to the practice of each artist.”
During their last work session, Sivan Eldar and computer music designer Augustin Muller invited two new artists to join the team: writer Lauren Groff and visual artist Julie Mehritu.
All on Stage | Technological Issues
“Augustin Muller, who works with me as computer music designer on this project, will actually be on stage, just like the other musicians and the two singers… all of whom play the role of the different ‘participants’, not to say the ‘characters’ of the opera”, explains Sivan Eldar. This writing choice is justified by the fact that a big part of the musical discourse is based on both written music and improvisation, due to the diversity in the musicians’ backgrounds. For the participants to engage with each other, and for it to go smoothly, there needs to be a certain level of proximity between them that is conducive to collaboration.
Considering this, working with Augustin Muller for the electronics came as a natural decision, since him and Sivan Eldar have been keeping in touch since their collaboration on Heave. “With this new piece, there are real challenges to overcome concerning creative freedom, tempo, reactivity (sound synthesis for instance needs to be executed really fast) or reliability. Moreover, we would like to use such an occasion to focus on computer-assisted composition, so that we can for instance work on sound sequences while they are being played – but more from a symbolic perspective than a purely digital one. The idea is to make content generation more malleable so that we can truly ‘play’ live the synthesis and its effects.”
One last thing is worth mentioning. For the computer music designer to be on stage means that he needs to play a persona. “I would like, for instance, to be able to close my computer, or at least for the audience not to see that I am using it”, Muller concludes. “I have been convinced for a while now of the importance of ‘inhabiting’ the gestures involved in diffusing sound and producing computer music, and how it can change the final result. Contrary to what most people might think, those also are musical gestures.”
Photo 2 : Peter Sellars et Ganavya Doraiswamy / Répétitions de The Nine Jewelled Deer de Sivan Eldar et Ganavya Doraiswamy – Création mondiale - Mise en scène Peter Sellars – Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2025 © Ruth Walz
Biography
