First Movement: Allegro Moderato

On February 26th, 2024 I performed the beginning of Schubert's Sonata Arpeggione as intro to my guest lecture about Ethnomusicology. The series of lectures at the School of Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities at Al Akhawayn University were entitled "Sense of Identity" within the frame of the university's Cultural Anchoring program. 

On Feb. 14th, 2024, Dr. Aliye Fatma Mataraci held a lecture at the Mohammed VI Library about "Soliman Second, ou Les Trois Sultannes (1761): The Manifestation of Eighteenth Century French Interest in the Ottomans". Together with student Zakaria Mouhibe (Computer Science Major) I had the pleasure to perform a short excerpt of Paul-César Gilbert's music which he composed to Charles Simon Favart's play.

What a joy to revive the wild imaginations of artists and audiences of the 18th century. The political interests between the French and the Ottomans were reflected in a variety of cultural artifacts including the presented Opéra Comique that was premiered at the THÉÂTRE DE LA COMÉDIE ITALIENNE in Paris (1761).

Favart and Gilbert based this play on J.F. Marmontel's tale titled 'Soliman II', in which three slaves compete for the love of the Sultan Soliman. The combination of her defiant behavior towards Soliman and her innately beguiling ways pave the French slave Roxelane's triumph over her Spanish (Elmira) and Circassian (Delia) rivals. she then uses her power over the Sultan to convince him to marry her in defiance of the laws of the Empire. The central research question of Dr. Aliye Fatma Mataraci's study is whether the power politics between Roxelane and Soliman in this play is representative of the diplomatic relations between France and the Ottoman Empire of the time. Roxelane's rhetorical victory over the Sultan represents a symbolic Western intrusion into the closed world of the Ottoman harem about which the West had long been fascinated, but it also manifests the dramatic shift in the power relations between the Ottomans and French along the course of the eighteenth century. 

Concert with the Voices United Choir of Al Akhawayn University on December 2nd, 2023.