Once again it appears that hip-hop will be responsible for breaking down both musical and social barriers, this time in celebration of Mozart’s 250th birthday. The Finnish National opera, in collaboration with Glydenbourne Education, is producing ‘School 4 Lovers – a Hip H’opera’, which is a hip-hop remake of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte opera.
The show will have a definite hip-hop vibe in terms of sound and appearance. UK hip-hop producer Charlie Parker partnered with conductor Jonathon Gill in order to give the classical music a revamp whilst staying true to its foundations.
The dialogue is rapped and supported by opera singers, and the original story has been interpolated to make it appropriate for 2006. Parker admitted the process has not been an easy one: “Updating Mozart's music wasn't as easy as slapping a hip-hop beat over it and calling it a day. Most of Mozart's music is not suited to hip-hop. Harmonically, it might be - I can take two bars of any Mozart music and loop it, and you'd get a good loop. But that's not what this is about. This is about trying to put something on stage where the opera singers can represent Mozart, and make it intelligible to a younger audience, and we bring in hip-hop as well. It's complicated."
Paradise, the British-born New York MC who plays the lead role of Donnie, believes that although the development of the show has been tough, it exemplifies the evolution of hip-hop, “We in hip-hop, we're always embracing," he says. "We love it when we can go and prove ourselves in different places. Especially this - this is a pivotal point to be here. They never thought hip-hop would make it this far. Here we are, on these grounds, and we're so diametrically opposed as well.”
"With the writing, the way I see it, hip-hop is poetry anyway. Their recitatives and the way it was worded is no different than Shakespeare writing his plays, or Chaucer writing his things, so to me when I see hip-hop, it's just a modern thing to all that anyway," he added.
The idea is to make Mozart not only more accessible to the youth, but also more plausible. After all it is monumental composers such as Mozart who have left an undying mark on music, with it being almost impossible to escape some sort of classical influence. Indeed, the sampling of classical music within hip-hop is quite common. Hopefully this show will prove to be a great development for both genres.
School 4 Lovers premieres this month in East Sussex, England. Visit www.school4lovers.com for more information.
The show will have a definite hip-hop vibe in terms of sound and appearance. UK hip-hop producer Charlie Parker partnered with conductor Jonathon Gill in order to give the classical music a revamp whilst staying true to its foundations.
The dialogue is rapped and supported by opera singers, and the original story has been interpolated to make it appropriate for 2006. Parker admitted the process has not been an easy one: “Updating Mozart's music wasn't as easy as slapping a hip-hop beat over it and calling it a day. Most of Mozart's music is not suited to hip-hop. Harmonically, it might be - I can take two bars of any Mozart music and loop it, and you'd get a good loop. But that's not what this is about. This is about trying to put something on stage where the opera singers can represent Mozart, and make it intelligible to a younger audience, and we bring in hip-hop as well. It's complicated."
Paradise, the British-born New York MC who plays the lead role of Donnie, believes that although the development of the show has been tough, it exemplifies the evolution of hip-hop, “We in hip-hop, we're always embracing," he says. "We love it when we can go and prove ourselves in different places. Especially this - this is a pivotal point to be here. They never thought hip-hop would make it this far. Here we are, on these grounds, and we're so diametrically opposed as well.”
"With the writing, the way I see it, hip-hop is poetry anyway. Their recitatives and the way it was worded is no different than Shakespeare writing his plays, or Chaucer writing his things, so to me when I see hip-hop, it's just a modern thing to all that anyway," he added.
The idea is to make Mozart not only more accessible to the youth, but also more plausible. After all it is monumental composers such as Mozart who have left an undying mark on music, with it being almost impossible to escape some sort of classical influence. Indeed, the sampling of classical music within hip-hop is quite common. Hopefully this show will prove to be a great development for both genres.
School 4 Lovers premieres this month in East Sussex, England. Visit www.school4lovers.com for more information.
cool.
