I confess that this post is quixotic – but I can explain. Nearly 20 years ago, I drove with my friend Martin Burch from Manchester to Liverpool to watch Welsh National Opera’s 1995-96 production of Verdi’s Nabucco, conducted by Carlo Rizzi. It was a controversial staging, because it was set during the Holocaust. That worked to some degree as the opera is about an oppressed people, its most famous moment being the sublime chorus of the Hebrew slaves (“Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate”). Ultimately, though, the production was problematic because the opera has a happy ending, closing with Nabucco, King of Babylon, granting freedom to the Israelites. That’s hard to square with Adolf Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.

Nevertheless, I think it’s important to consider how this opera might speak to modern concerns. I decided to write about it today because Nabucco had its premiere at La Scala 172 years ago on March 9, 1842. It was Verdi’s first major success, catapulting him to national fame at the age of 28, and placing him on the path to sustained international acclaim. At private and public funeral services in Milan following his death on January 27, 1901, crowds sang the chorus of the Hebrew slaves.

A Myanmar link emerges through the opera’s core theme of tyranny. True, the actual locations used by Verdi and his librettist Temistocle Solera were Babylon and Jerusalem in 587 BCE. But it’s standard practice to stage operas in different times and places. My feeling is that putting Nabucco in a Myanmar context is an interesting way both of exploring its contemporary resonance, and of bringing the country before people who rarely give it a thought.

Tomorrow’s post will therefore be even more quixotic: an attempt to sketch some brief production notes for a Nabucco set in Myanmar. I should state here that the one major theme I have dispensed with in this retelling is religion. As written, that aspect of the opera simply cannot be made to work in this context. I accept that’s something of an issue. I feel my version still holds together, though ultimately of course that’s for others to judge. I’d love to see it on stage.