‘Krishna’ – The Opera, world premiere production – about to raise its curtain
An ancient story, now retold in modern contemporary form through an opera…ACV’s Suman Bhuchar meets opera trailblazer Wasfi Kani to talk about the World Premiere of this new opera on Lord Krishna…
NESTLED on the outskirts of the Surrey hills, this 16th century country estate – Grange Park – has been a home to contemporary opera that has been delighting audiences since 2017.
Created by Wasfi Kani CBE, this formidable woman is a trailblazer, who has made a name for herself in the opera firmament and is probably the only Asian woman running an opera company.
She has been passionate about opera for decades (more on this later) so when she heard about this work by composer John Tavener, she had to get it.
The work entitled ‘Krishna’ is described as a “mystical pantomime”, was written by Tavener (1944-2013), who is considered to be one of UK’s most influential composers. He had a deep interest in spirituality and wrote many choral works. You can read more about him – see the link below.
How did it all come about, acv asked.
We met over a quick tea – and although Kani is fond of punctuating all her sentences with “it’s all on the internet”, she explained how it happened.
“I am not going to tell you about John Tavener, because you can Google that. You know throughout his life he was very interested in religion, so at some stage towards the end of his life, he started looking at Krishna and decided he wanted to write – he called it a mystic pantomime and he started composing it.
“He had a guy who was advising him about some of the texts particularly and that guy died and then he got in touch with someone called Ranchor Prime (a Hindu religious scholar with knowledge about Lord Krishna).”
She explained that this opera is not the tale of Lord Krishna many will be familiar with – the truculent “butter thief” (as he is affectionately known by some) – who grows up to advise Arjun, one of the Pandava brothers on the battlefield of Kurukshetra at the onset of the epic poem, ‘The Mahabharata’.
“Tavener wasn’t interested in stories, he was interested in the spiritual side of things and that’s what he was trying to encapsulate in words and music and in movement because there are dances.”
The story of Krishna is the story of a cycle of life, so Krishna comes to earth when there’s a problem – and she told acv: “It’s meant to be a kind of spiritual experience.”
The story goes that Tavener wrote the opera in 2005 and it remained in manuscript form and was almost forgotten after the composer died in 2013.
“Prince Charles knew Tavener, there are photographs with him – Google it and then when Tavener died – Prince Charles knew the piece hadn’t been put on. He went to someone called Sir David Poultney.”
Poultney is a very distinguished theatre and opera director and librettist, who then told Kani about the piece by Tavener. He said it had never been performed and it was only in manuscript form.
“This means that you need to be able to read music to make some kind of sense of it. So, I went down to the publisher and I made sense of it and I decided we were going to do it,” she revealed.
That was in about 2019 and then Covid occurred, so the work was paused.
Now ‘Krishna’ is due to have its world premiere at Grange Park Opera on Thursday (June 4) directed by Poultney.
Opera was something that Kani fell into naturally. The 70-year old was born and brought up in the East End after her parents moved to the UK following the Partition of India.
There’s more background in the link on her below but basically, her family moved to West London and she went to Burlington Grammar School for Girls. She went on to read music at St Hilda’s college, Oxford.
“I was a computer programmer, I read music at Oxford, I was a violinist, I am a pianist, I decided I’d like to be a bit of a conductor, I started doing some conducting. I conducted at Dartington Hall (a grand estate house in Devon which hosts festivals and musical events) and then I know about Maths and accounting and I put together an opera company as well.”
She set up a computer consultancy in 1986 and an opera company, Grange Park Opera in 1997 – which since 2016 has been based in the grounds of West Horsley Place, a 350 acre estate where she purpose built a ‘Theatre in the Woods’ opera house.
“I think music is universal, whether you are playing the violin or the piano. Of course, the amazing thing about Opera is you tell a story through music whereas playing a violin sonata is a bit more abstract.”
Grange Park Opera is a key part of the British opera scene and attracts world class names. The 2026 Summer Season is a mix between traditional works such as ‘The Barber of Seville’, ‘The Ring Cycle’, now alongside such works as ‘Krishna’.
Last year, it staged the World Premiere of ‘Taj Mahal’, the story of Shah Jahan with music by Nishat Khan and a libretto by Kit Hesketh-Harvey
It is certainly an event day out, after getting off at a local station, Horsley – you go the country estate where you can enjoy wandering around the gardens, sipping champagne and having a picnic or dining at the in house restaurant between Act 1 & Act 2 of the opera being performed.
There is a 100-minute interval that allows you to really savour the occasion.
If you think it’s all expensive day out, then Kani will remind you that it takes a lot of people to put on an opera.
“I’ve got 80 people in the orchestra, I’ve got 50 people on the stage I’ve got about 50 people backstage, you’re talking about hundreds of people needed to put on an opera”.
Grange Park Opera also receives no public subsidy, so it needs to run its programme through ticket sales, membership, donations and sponsorship.
‘Krishna’ has a world class company, alongside the director, Sir David Poultney, the choreographer is Shobana Jeyasingh with design by Rachana Jadhav and the cast features four people who are playing Krishna at various ages of his life.
“There is Krishna as a child, Krishna as an adolescent, Krishna as a young man and Krishna as a man,” she outlined.
And sometimes they sing all together and whenever they sing it’s accompanied by eight flutes.
Now normally in an Orchestra, you have two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons but what Tavener decided to write, he’s got eight flutes and just one oboe. So, whenever Krishna sings, the eight flutes play and Tavener also said he wanted them to be spatially separated.
“So, they are going to be on the 5th level of the opera house in the 5th balcony, so you kind of listen to stuff coming out of the Orchestra Pit from the stage.
“And then when Krishna sings, in order to create the spirituality of it, all of the eight flutes play which I think is very interesting, I have never heard that done before.”
Tavener’s work, she said, speaks to Krishna devotees, it also speaks to people who are into spiritualism, metaphysics, and people who do yoga and all of that, but it’s not like your average Mozart opera, she intimated – where you start off with a story, half way through, you’ve got a problem and at the end you’ve got a resolution.
“I think Tavener’s not trying to tell you every story there is about Krishna, he’s really trying to create something that represents the cycle of Krishna’s life and his impact on every human being. Krishna is in your heart whether you know it or not.”
All pictures: ‘Krishna’ by Marc Brenner
Listing
‘Krishna’ by John Tavener, arrangement Sir David Poultney, choreography Shobana Jeyasingh and set design by Rachana Jadhav
Opera House, Grange Park Opera , West Horsley Place, KT24 6AN
Performances are on selected days: June 4, 13, 21 and July 2 – check listings for further times and other information – see link below
The show will travel to Houston Grand Opera in Autumn 2027
https://grangeparkopera.co.uk/whats-on/krishna
https://grangeparkopera.co.uk/whats-on/krishna/#dates-tickets
https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/composer/1567/John-Tavener
https://grangeparkopera.co.uk/wasfi-kani
About the house
https://www.grangeparkopera.co.uk/history/
