By Emmanuel Narokobi

A super special friend of mine has been giving me a crash course in Opera. I obviously have no clue about it although I recognise certain pieces of music from them being used in movies etc. My friend also speaks fluent Italian which helps when she’s translating it for me so I can better understand it, but just listening to a version of “Nessun Dorma” by Paul Potts really blew me away. What made it even more emotional was the fact that this guy was a mobile phone salesman and out of the blue on a talent show on TV he comes out with a majestic voice that kept the crowd in awe. One of the judges remarked that what we were seeing was ‘a little lump of coal that is about to become a diamond…’. (jeez I’m getting a lump in my throat just writing about it).

But getting back to Opera, she also ran through Wagner’s 4 part Epic, I recognised the tune for ‘Ride of the Valkyries‘ from the movie ‘Apocalypse Now‘ and now I’m trying to download ‘La Mama Morta‘ which was played in a scene in Tom Hanks movie ‘Philadelphia‘. (ahh Thank God for YouTube!)

What I began to see was that Opera in most cases were folklore, tumbuna stories of their ancestors which were able to live and continue thriving through the art form of Opera. You can probabaly guess where I’m heading with this, but here goes, what about our culture then? What famous PNG stories do we have that reflect human spirit, tragedy and triumph? A perfect example of how the stories in Opera has survived is the very fact that allot of the story themes and music have been used in modern day advertising and entertainment as well. For example the tune for “Nessun Dorma” being used in the Olympics.

Na yumi olsem wonem nau? I used to watch some great funny plays when I was at UPNG, but I don’t hear of them anymore. You get allot of productions at the Moresby Arts Theatre and that’s a great effort but where is the balance with locally produced art? What if PNG musicians like Pati Doi teamed up with a playwright to do a production of some tolai legend? Maybe it comes down to money, maybe it’s marketing…who knows? I mean why don’t we even use PNG music tunes for advertising, instead of always using western music tunes?

It would be nice to see more Tumbuna and modern day stories being translated into plays. I know there is a good body of local productions out there but it has been far and long in between each one, but perhaps if the scripts could be collected in one place then maybe more than one acting group could perform the same stories elsewhere in the country as well. Sort of like a collection of classic rock hits that any band could pick up and play.

Anyway, here’s that Paul Potts video that’s been making me cry at my work desk…

and here is ‘La Mama Morta‘ in ‘Philadelphia‘