Sitar legend Ravi Shankar’s only opera Sukanya, named after his wife, will get its world premiere in the UK in May 2017.
The first-of-its-kind stage musical, which combines operatic traditions with Indian classical music, was being composed by Pandit Ravi Shankar at the time of his passing in 2012 and completed with the help of his daughter, sitar maestro Anoushka Shankar.
“It thrills me that this final project of my father’s, about which he was so passionate, is finally coming to life,” she said on Tuesday.
“My father was, of course, the first Indian classical musician to work with Western classical musicians, the first to write concertos for orchestra, the first to bring the music of India to a global audience. Even in his final years, he was the first to think further, to want to push even more boundaries, and bring Indian classical music to the context of opera,” she added.
