Dudamel dirigeix

'Scheherazade': when Rimsky-Kórsakov's music and Shirin Neshat's images turn the tale into an act of resistance.

Scheherazade draws on One Thousand and One Nights, the medieval collection of Eastern tales, to present the act of storytelling as a form of resistance. Rimski-Kórsakov composed the work as a symphonic poem in which the solo violin, the woodwinds and the orchestral fabric paint turbulent seas, storms and oases.

Under Dudamel's direction, the orchestra unfolds a sound discourse of almost cinematic vividness. The music is combined with the film by Shirin Neshat, an artist who explores exile, identity and silence. Her images do not illustrate the score but enter into dialogue with it: faces emerging from the gloom, deserts, texts on the skin, and a Xahrazad understood as a contemporary voice.

The production, co-produced by the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the New York Philharmonic, brings music and image together in a single reading of the tale. The result moves away from any exoticism to focus on the power of storytelling as the thread that holds the listener.