Real talk on Bizet’s ‘The Pearl Fishers’

A video essay by Rumble Theatre’s Jiv Parasram

A video essay by Rumble Theatre’s Jiv Parasram

Vancouver Opera is bringing back The Pearl Fishers to the stage for the first time in 30 years. As part of our work in exploring and explicating the opera, we have commissioned some thinkers, creators, artists and composers to explore their responses to the opera.

Hello, my name is Jiv Parasram. I’m a real life South Asian. Some might even call me an Indian. And as an Indian, I am here to tell you all about this opera set in Sri Lanka. Now you might be thinking, “Wait a minute, Sri Lanka’s not India.” And to that I say, “I agree, please tell that to India.” See, the thing is, at the time that this opera was written, 1863, the British East India was in control of most of South Asia, including Sri Lanka. And so Europe just lumped together all the many diverse cultures as generically Indian or sometimes Hindoos with two Os. Kind of like how the Hudson’s Bay Company was in control of most of what’s now Canada. It’s awesome when a company is in control because then when they exploit the land and the people as resources, everyday citizens gets financial returns, maybe even your family.

Now look, I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to give you the story as fast as I can in a real nutshell, or a mustard seed to be a little bit more culturally specific. See, the weird thing is, I don’t know anything about opera, I’m a theater guy. But Vancouver Opera, after they programmed the show were like, “Uh oh, Spaghetti-Os,” with one O, and they were like, “Oh no, this seems perhaps problematic in its depiction of Hinduism. Better call a Hindu.” Anyway, I can confirm that indeed, yeah, the opera is pretty messed up. So this opera, written at the time of Colonial Ceylon, 1863, and at the time Ceylon was under the colonial control of the British. But this opera was written by some French dudes who I guess were nostalgic for the good old days when the French Republic had colonial control of Sri Lanka, which was for about a few months of one harbour.

Historically, Sri Lanka was colonized by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, then the British over a period of about 400 years or so. But, Lanka has been a highly advanced society for, at the very least, 3000 years, and people have been living there for about 125,000 years. But the French were there for a couple of months, so all good, right? Anyway, so these French dudes who actually never went to Sri Lanka or as Europe called it, Ceylon, what they wrote is I suppose what they imagined Sri Lanka to be like. So this opera, The Pearl Fishers, is more accurately what you could consider an orientalist imagining. And Orientalism, if you’re not familiar, it’s a term coined by Edward Said, and in a nutshell, Orientalism is a way in which the West portrays the East to be very rich in culture, but also barbaric, violent, primitive and intrinsically backwards in nature.

Particularly, in this era of Orientalism, a very common theme would be that women in the orient were targets of violence by indigenous and native populations, often to due to their barbaric religions, aye. And so it was good to invade, conquer and colonize because Europe, or the Occident, would save women by doing so. And if that reminds you of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s because it never fully went away. So keep in mind that this is what the source material of this opera is because even as an Indian who’s never been to any of South Asia, who doesn’t speak any South Asian languages, as a Hindu who grew up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, even I can assure you that if you were looking for anything culturally South Asian about this opera, oh buddy, no way guy.

Jivesh Parasram is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, and facilitator of Indo-Caribbean descent. His work has toured Nationally and Internationally. Jiv is the founding Artistic Producer of Pandemic Theatre, and became the Artistic Director of Rumble Theatre following three years as the Associate Artistic Producer at Theatre Passe Muraille. He was a member of the Cultural Leader Lab with the Banff Centre and Toronto Arts Council. His public service work has included collaborations with the Ad Hoc Assembly, The Canadian Commission for UNESCO, and as an advisor to the National Arts Centre. His current cultural practice centres decolonization through aesthetics.

Tickets and information to The Pearl Fishers, October 22–30 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, are available at VancouverOpera.ca