At age 90, Adelaida Mammadova is still a formidable presence — spry, talkative and full of verve — as Michael Santoro found out when he visited her in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku. Santoro, who directs the annual San Francisco World Music Festival, sought out Mammadova to talk about her late husband, Murtuza Mammadov, who was one of the world’s most esteemed opera singers. During the visit, Mammadova showed Santoro a photo album that contained a picture, taken in 1960, of her husband with Mei Lanfang, Beijing’s greatest opera star. Here was the first clue that Murtuza Mammadov and Mei Lanfang had planned to collaborate in what would have been a meeting of historic importance. The collaboration never happened. Both singers died in 1961, within a month of each other.
“I don’t read the Azeri language, and she handed me a book, and I’m flipping through and I immediately go to the photos,” says Santoro. “As I’m flipping through, I see a photo of her husband sitting at a table with Mei Lanfang. I’ve studied (Mei Lanfang’s) music the past two years, and I saw this picture and I was just blown away. I never thought I’d find it there in Baku. She lit up when she saw me point to that picture. She said that Mei Lanfang had heard her husband singing on the radio, and fell in love with it, and came to Azerbaijan and attended his opera, and then they went to their house, which is where we were. It’s now a museum for her husband and Mugham opera. She said, ‘In this very room, after they came back from the opera, I cooked Mei Lanfang dinner.’ I’m sitting there, and I’m thinking, ‘No one knows this story.’ ”
Mei Lanfang and Murtuza Mammadov; Photo courtesy of Adelaida Mammadova.
They do now. This year’s San Francisco World Music Festival, which begins Thursday, November 8, 2012 is fulfilling the dream of Murtuza Mammadov and Mei Lanfang by staging The Opera Project: Voices From the Other Side . . ., which features singers and musicians from China and Azerbaijan, along with others from South Korea and Tibet. When the full ensemble of artists take the stage at the Jewish Community Center, it will premier a work that shows off the stunning operatic traditions of each country. From China, Santoro and the festival recruited four prominent members of the China National Peking Opera Company, which Mei Lanfang helped found in 1955. From Azerbaijan, Santoro and the festival recruited The Land of the Fire Consorts, a group that melds operatic music that Murtuza Mammadov championed with other Azeri musical traditions. The rehearsals have been “intense,” Santoro says.
“You can feel the hunger in the room,” he says. “You can feel the intensity of this quest for an innovative way to combine their cultures and their music.”