Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The passing of eight centuries has done little to dim humanity’s appetite for Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, the Sufi mystic born in 1207 who in 2014 was named America’s best-selling poet. At a time of theological turmoil, Rumi’s human-focused interpretation of Islam managed to unite the religion’s subversive and conservative wings in mutual fascination. His continuing popularity blithely disregards borders of time, geography, faith and language — even that dividing sanctity and commerce.Rumi was born into privilege to Persian parents in what is now Afghanistan, the son of an eccentric preacher, and worked as a religious scholar. He travelled the Silk Road but spent the bulk of his life in the Turkish city of Konya. Having made his name, he came to shun the intellectual theologies he once disseminated, preferring a more heartfelt form of prayer that embraced poetry, dance and music.The catalyst for that change was Rumi’s meeting with Shams Tabrizi, a charismatic poet who took the scholar under his wing for more than two years before upping sticks without explanation. Their intense, transformative relationship is the subject of Sky in a Small Cage, an oratorio from composer Rolf Hind setting new verse by Dante Micheaux alongside Rumi’s own. The work, semi-staged in this world premiere by Mahogany Opera for the Copenhagen Opera Festival, resembles a classical oratorio in combining elements of character narrative with theology, prayer and a contextualising chorus. Composers from Handel to John Adams have managed it, but Hind’s often nondescript score, by turns coolly meditative and hyper-expressionistic, judders uneasily between its modes of expression, which only occasionally resonate sufficiently on their own terms. Florid vocal lines mean the burden of storytelling is carried by chunks of the libretto projected on to a screen.If our consumer culture oversimplifies Rumi, then Hind and his colleagues at least acknowledge his ambiguities — personal and theological. Sky in a Small Cage is best when handling the elusive nature of the human bond between Shams (baritone Yannis François) and Rumi (countertenor James Hall): the sense that even if it was a sexual relationship, it transcended those terms. The most striking music is for the six-strong chorus, who bookend the performance with ecstatic invitations to dance and prayer.An instrumental ensemble incorporating western, Middle Eastern and south-east Asian instruments sprawls across the wide performing space, perhaps one reason its variously melding rhythmic patterns never quite click into a convincing groove. Frederic Wake-Walker’s staging is low on solutions to the static nature of the drama. It settles on having much of the company walk with ceremonial sluggishness off, back on and then round the stage — an enterprise frustrated by the presence of so much musical accoutrement, gamelan included. It would test even Rumi’s famed patience.★★☆☆☆At the Barbican Centre, London, on September 8, barbican.org.uk
