Posted on 01/27/2018 10:50:31 PM PST by nickcarraway
State Museum of Musical Culture of Azerbaijan hosted a remarkable event dedicated to the 110th anniversary of the opera "Leyli and Majnun", composed by great national composer Uzeyir Hajibayli.
"Leyli and Majnun" is Azerbaijan’s first national opera written by the classic of musical culture Uzeyir Hajibeyli in 1907. This opera is not only the country’s first opera, but also the first opera of the entire Muslim East. For the first time the opera was staged in the theater of the Azerbaijani oil-industrialist Haji Zeynalabdin Tagiyev in Baku on January 12, 1908. This work is considered the pearl of Azerbaijani culture.
The director of the museum, the candidate of art criticism, the honored worker of culture Alla Bayramova, the head of the museum department Khanym Abdinova, the composer, musicologist, honored worker of arts Nargiz Shafiyeva, the son of the opera singer Ahmed Agdam, the honored worker of arts - professor Telman Agdamsky talked about the development path and achievements of the Azerbaijani composer school for 110 years. Their speeches were accompanied by a slide show on the basis of the collections of the State Museum of Musical Culture of Azerbaijan.
In the artistic part of the event, a concert performed by the soloists of the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater - People's Artist Gyulaz Mamedova, honored artists Sabuhi Ibayeva, Elkhan Mansurov (tar), Ilahi Efendiyeva, Nargiz Agayeva, Taleh Yakhyaev, Azerbaijan State Music Theater soloists - Atesh Garayev, Fidan Babaeva, Samed Khasiev, Aidan Hasanova, Aysel Shahbazli, Eleonora Mustafayeva, Alimamed Novruzov, Saida Sharifaliyeva, Shaban Jafarov, Amrakh Dadashev, and others was held.
The opera "Leyli and Majnun" became founder of the unique new genre-- mugham-opera-- in musical culture of the world, which synthesizes Oriental and European musical forms, resembling a dialogue of two musical cultures of the East and West.
"Leyli and Majnun" is based on traditional Azerbaijani mughams, which are performed in their original form - meaning unwritten and improvised. Entire segments of the opera feature specific mughams, depending on the emotional effect the composer was trying to convey. The mughams called Mahur-Hindi, Segah, Chahargah, Kurd-Shahnaz, Bayati-Shiraz, Shushtar, Bayati-Kurd, Shabi-Hijran and Gatar are among those featured in this opera.
Another innovation of this work was that it included harmonic choral music, which is not an indigenous characteristic of Azerbaijani music. The chorus was used to move the plot along, comment on events and reflect on the psychological state of the main characters. The chorus was accompanied by a symphonic orchestra - another new feature.
For a long time, until the Soviet government was established, Azerbaijani national opera developed thanks to the works of Hajibayli - "Sheikh Sanan" (opera, 1909), "Husband and Wife" (musical comedy, 1909), "Rustam and Zohrab" (opera, 1910), "If not this, then that" (musical comedy, 1911), "Farhad and Shirin" (opera, 1911), etc. In subsequent years, Zulfugar Hajibayov ("Ashiq Garib", 1916), Muslim Magomayev ("Shah Ismail", 1919), Afrasiyab Badalbayli ("Nizami", 1948), Fikrat Amirov ("Sevil", 1955) and other well-known composers contributed to the national opera art.
Hajibayli not only contributed to the development of theatre and opera culture in Azerbaijan but also educated young Azerbaijani composers on the secrets of music art. One of them was Shafiga Akhundova, a prominent Azerbaijani composer, the first professional female opera author ("Galin gayasi"-"Bride's rock") in the East.
The 100th anniversary of Hajibayli's Leyli and Majnun was marked in UNESCO headquarters on June 24, 2008. The event has been held under the order signed by the President on holding anniversaries on significant events and well-known persons related with Azerbaijan in 2008-2009.
ROFLLLL!!!
I didn’t know Islam had culture. I thought Islam only destroys culture.
Wait til the jihadis hear about it. The place will be bombed.
If something is unwritten and improvised, as it says, how did he write it? Did he write it down all those years ago and now it’s a fixed bunch of songs?
This clearly isn’t from the music-is-haram parts of the Moslem world.
Who cares? As usual they are waaay behind civilization
I still remember some of those Arabesque fantasies produced by Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s.
Ridiculous plots, Technicolor, dancing girls, camels. Great time fillers. They don’t often even show them on TV anymore!
Maybe those movies “offend” someone. Wonder whom?
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