Je T'Aime de Deux Amours

By Daniel J. Wakin, "Spoleto Italy: Poetic Love Songs With Mideastern Roots" - The New York Times - New York, NY, USA
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Spoleto, Italy: In around A.D. 800, as Spoleto was being subsumed into Charlemagne’s empire, a Sufi mystic in Iraq was writing poems extolling the purest kind of love for God.

The mystic was Rabi’a al-Adawiyya, and the poems — at least works attributed to her — wafted through the air Monday night at the Roman Amphitheater, site of some of the more arresting scenes at the Festival of Two Worlds.

The renowned ney player Kudsi Erguner, a Turkish-born Parisian who lives in Paris, appeared with an ensemble — two singers, a percussionist and the player of a qanun, a zither-like instrument.

They ney is a long end-blown flute. Mr. Erguner is a master who has collaborated with filmmakers, opera directors and Western musicians. Adding to the cultural layers of this arresting performance was the fact that the melodies were those originally sung by the mother of all Arab divas, Egypt’s Um Kulthum, to al-Adawiyya’s verse.

Waed Bouhassoun, a Syrian, sang directly and with feeling, her lines swirling sinuously with Mr. Erguner’s breathy ney. She also played the oud.

Ms. Bouhassoun was sometimes joined by Yunus Balcioglu, who is Turkish, and sang with an urgent tenor. A Frenchman, Bruno Caillat, produced a myriad of sounds on Middle Eastern drums. Ghassan Ammouri was a nimble qanunist.

The show was titled, “Je t'aime de deux amours" (I love You with two loves), from one of al-Adawiyya’s poems: one love is self-interested, the other only worthy of God.

Aside from a few drops, the rain threatening all day held off. But some things can’t be helped: occasional whistles from a nighttime soccer game nearby rang out.

[Picture: Ghassan Ammouri and Waed Bouhassoun. Photo: Andrea Kim Mariani]

[Read more about this show on the Spoleto Festival English Webpages: http://www.festivaldispoleto.com/interno.asp?id_dettaglio=67&id=8&lang=eng
Go to the English/Italian Home for the full Programme:
http://www.festivaldispoleto.com/].