The team features top musicians such as vocalist Homayun Shajarian and composer and instrumentalist Sohrab Purnazeri, and a cast composed of Shahr Dowlatshahi, Mehdi Pakdel and Amir Jadidi.
In a press conference held at Tehran’s Espinas Palace Hotel on Sunday, playwright Naghmeh Samini who is collaborating with “Si” called it “a musical drama” that provides an atmosphere to link music and theater.
The project gets its title from the Shahnameh verse reading, “I toiled much over thirty years, by the Persian language I remade Iran” that it refers to the fact that Ferdowsi spent 30 years writing the Shahnameh over a millennium ago.
“The Shahnameh was able to revive the Persian language during a critical and chaotic period of the history of Iran. And today, we are in a sensitive period but we can still seek help from our national legends,” dramaturge Amir-Hossein Mahozi said at the press conference.
The stories of “Zal and Rudabeh”, “Rustam and Esfaniyar” and “Rustam and Sohrab” have been chosen from the Shahnameh to be staged during open-air performances that will start in the courtyard of Tehran’s Sadabad Cultural-Historical Complex on August 6.
Mahozi said that between the lines, the stories have the concepts of love, freedom and patriotism.
The performances will be directed by Ali-Asghar Dashti who said that dialogues have been composed in melodic qualities to attain the atmosphere that the music is planned to feature.
The project will have some surprises for the audience, Shajarian said and added his troupe will do its best to satisfy people from every walk of life in the concerts.
“It is a new form of performance and I am extremely excited about how things will go,” he said.
He said he will remain loyal to the principles of Iranian music in all his performances. However, he added that he doesn’t limit himself to a certain musical form.
Purnazeri who is the initiator of the project, said, “The project intends to help us reconstruct our national identity.”
He added that a fusion of regional and traditional Iranian music and Western classical music will be performed in the project.
Source: Tehran Times