At first glance, the two women who drive the narrative of a new opera by Kamala Sankaram and Paul Muldoon seem an unlikely pairing.
Custom of the Coast weaves together the stories of Savita Halappanavar, the young Indian woman who became a symbol of this country’s pro–choice movement after she died in a Galway hospital in 2012 and Cork-born pirate Anne Bonny, a swashbuckling icon from the 18th century, who disguised her gender by wearing men’s clothes.
Indian-American composer Sankaram and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Muldoon are on a video call from United States, where they are both based, to discuss their new work.
Muldoon, who wrote the libretto, has long been fascinated by pirates. He rereads Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson every year. “It’s one of the greatest pieces of writing in English in its representation of the pirate world,” he says.
RM Block
But how did Muldoon first come to the idea that the lives of these two women from such different times and backgrounds might work as an interwoven story? “It’s one of those strange things that I can’t quite tell you …,” he says of the origins of the libretto.
“The paradoxical relationship between the two stories came to me in, I think, almost a kind of a dream, as many things do. So I can’t really tell you which came first. I think they arrived together.”
Muldoon says that like many people he was “very troubled” when the news broke of 31-year-old Halapannavar’s death. “We have so much to be proud of in Ireland with our two women presidents, our poet President and indeed our gay, Indian taoiseach. This [Savita’s death] was a moment where we seemed to be going backward rather than forward. It was a critical moment for many of us ...”
Halappanavar’s story is shamefully familiar to most of us. Originally from the Indian state of Karnataka, the dentist moved to Galway in 2008 to be with her husband Praveen, a manufacturing engineer. She was 17 weeks pregnant in October 2012 when, complaining of back pain, she was admitted to University Hospital Galway. While there she was told she was having a miscarriage. She and Praveen as a result made repeated requests for an abortion, which were denied on legal grounds. In the early hours of October 28th, Savita died from severe sepsis.
An investigation by the HSE subsequently found that there was a “lack of recognition of the gravity of the situation and of the increasing risk to the mother which led to passive approaches and delays in aggressive treatment”. Peter Boylan, former master of the National Maternity Hospital, has said “the real problem was the inability to terminate the pregnancy prior to Ms Halappanavar developing a real and substantial risk of death. By that time it was, effectively, too late to save her life.”
Hallapanavar’s tragic death ignited a social movement across Ireland. There were candlelit vigils held in her memory and national protests that influenced the government’s introduction of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill. Her death galvanised a generation of pro-choice campaigners and in June 2018, 66 per cent of the country voted to repeal the 8th Amendment, which had effectively outlawed abortion in Ireland.
Afterwards, campaigners gathered at the mural of Savita in Dublin’s city centre to mark the historic victory for women’s rights that will be forever linked to the young Indian woman.
The opera, which is directed by Alan Gilsenan and will be premiered next month at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, gives voice to both Halappanavar and Bonny in powerful narratives that run alongside each other, until they collide in surprising and unexpected ways.
The “paradoxical” link that Muldoon referred to between the women is a fascinating one. In Custom of the Coast – the term for the pirate code that governed seafaring activity – Muldoon contrasts the fact that one of the women, Halappanavar, died because she was pregnant while the other woman, Bonny, who had been sentenced to death for piracy, was granted a stay of execution after she “pleaded the belly”. The phrase meant she was pregnant and her life should be spared. In fact, Bonny was only faking pregnancy in order to avoid execution.
The opera also follows another female pirate in men’s clothing, Mary Read, who was actually pregnant, and also “pleaded the belly” but later died in childbirth. With Halappanavar’s story running alongside all of this, the opera is a damning indictment of the treatment of women through the ages.
For her part, Sankaram, who often bases her work on women’s rights issues, was very much aware of Savita Halappanavar. Around the time of her death, she had been creating a chamber opera called Thumbprint based on the story of Pakistani woman Mukhtar Mai, who was gang-raped as retribution for a crime her brother had committed.
Mai went on to sue her attackers and became the first woman in Pakistan to successfully prosecute a so-called honour crime. “Savita’s story was very much in the air at the time,” Sankaram says. “Also, here in the United States while we, until recently, had constitutional protections that were supposed to preserve your right to choose an abortion, those rights were already being eroded in many places, particularly in red states. And we’ve seen what has happened since then.”
Since Roe v Wade was reversed three years ago, access to abortion across the United States has been dramatically reduced with 12 states now operating complete bans and others imposing restrictions based on gestational limits.
Muldoon came to her with the opera proposal a few months after Roe v Wade had been struck down in the United States. “It seemed very important because even though the opera is very situated in Ireland, the themes are universal.”
Sankaram said although she is not Irish, she was watching for the outcome of the Repeal campaign. “There have always been these laws around what women can and cannot do with their own bodies. Sadly, we in United States are now very much behind where you are in terms of our rights, which is just so depressing.”
Custom of the Coast “asks questions about a women’s right to control over their bodies, how that has changed and how it has stayed the same over time ...”
“I think placing these women next to each other really highlights that it’s always been this way,” she continues. “In one case, Anne Bonny was able to use pregnancy to save her own life but Mary Read, who also ‘pleaded the belly’, died. It’s important that it’s not just the parallel between Anne Bonny and Savita Halappanavar, it’s between Mary Read, Anne Bonny and Savita Halappanavar.
“The three of them together. That’s what is interesting about the way this piece works. It’s not a slice of realistic opera libretto, it’s much more evocative. It’s everything happening at once. And you can sort of see how the threads extend through time from Anne and Mary to Savita, and how that might also have an interaction with where we are now.”
The work also chimed with her own pirate obsession. When Muldoon asked if she knew about Bonny, her response was “of course”.
Sankaram’s Indian heritage also came into play as she composed the piece. “Savita was from Bengaluru, which is where part of my family lives. So there is something about what it means to be an immigrant in a new country. And what it means to choose to assimilate or not assimilate, and how you’re going to do that, which is part of her story. So it felt resonant for all of those reasons.”
Interestingly, a few years ago Muldoon, who was born in Portadown, Co Armagh, found some distant Indian heritage of his own. “I discovered that I actually am part Indian. I’m not suggesting, by the way, that this gives me any particular insight. I don’t quite believe in that. But it is the case that one of my great-grandparents, from what I could make out from the DNA information, was of Punjabi heritage.”
The historical connections between both countries are nodded to in the piece which mentions the green, white and orange of both flags. “The Indian movement towards independence was influenced by the Irish movement, so much so that the Indian revolution was staged at Easter,” says Muldoon.
Sankaram’s opera score is a fusion of traditional Irish and Indian classical music, while structurally Muldoon’s libretto is inspired by everything from sea shanties to the Hindi ghazal. The main roles are sung by soprano Anchal Dhir and mezzo-soprano Michelle O’Rourke. It might well be the only opera to include a starring role for the accordion, played by renowned musician Danny O’Mahony.
[ Irish women warriors: from Granuaile to Anne Bonny and Countess MarkieviczOpens in new window ]
Sankaram says, given the tragic subject matter, she wanted to create “something that was loving and respectful and honest, to show you are honouring that person and uplifting their story”.
She drew from the strong cultural traditions in both Ireland and India. “For me, to come in as someone who isn’t Irish, didn’t feel quite honest. A lot of it is figuring out how to bring in Irish traditional music and let it be what it is, without my imposing myself on it, I wanted to sort of make a bed for it to exist”.
Custom of the Coast is the story with the reproductive lives of three women at its heart. In an era where the question of who gets to tell certain stories is forensically discussed, did Muldoon question whether he was the right person to create this work?
“It’s a perfectly reasonable question but I feel it would be a sad day if men were not allowed to write about women, and women were not allowed to write about men ... the two main ideas which I would be very conscious of as I’m writing are ignorance and humility. For me those are absolute sine qua nons, without them nothing really of interest happens. It would be a poor, poor world I think where the imagination is not given free rein.
“And isn’t it vital that men do get involved and become troubled and moved by these issues? I think it is.”
“The story had to be told and Paul was the person who came to me with the story,” Sankaram says. “At the end of the day respect and honour are the most important things. Are you telling the story because you think it’s going to make you money? Are you looking for fame? Obviously that’s not the case here ... I think it’s complex, but as long as the work is approached with love and care, then that’s really the bottom line for me.”
The Catholic Church’s dominance over women’s lives in Ireland is brought into sharp relief by the opera’s venue, St Canice’s Cathedral. In the libretto, Muldoon imagines the everyday lives of Hallapanavar and Bonny bringing both women vibrantly to life. At one point, again emphasising the church’s influence, there is a line about Halappanavar taking a selfie outside a Magdalene Laundry in Galway:
“I’ll never forget the selfie I took
outside the old Magdalene laundry on Forster Street.
To think that I’d given up the so-called third world
for a country famous for bards and biotech
only to find the Papal flag unfurled”
I ask Muldoon whether this selfie scene was inspired by reports of Halappanavar’s life in Galway, or whether he felt free to imagine elements of her inner and outer world. “Regarding the selfie, I don’t remember if that actually happened quite honestly, I don’t remember if I made that up. There’s always an element of fictionalisation ... it’s inevitable that there would be some kind of invention about the piece. Let’s face it, at the core of the work is the notion that Bonny and Halappanavar are in some way connected and perhaps engaged in dialogue. Well, that just did not happen, but for the purposes of this piece it happens and I hope we can get deeper insight into both stories from them being connected in that way.”
Returning to his dream that inspired the opera, he says “the ideal is that we are visited by forces beyond us, be it the language, be it a melody. Without sounding too corny or pretentious, there’s really no accounting for much of what happens in the business of art-making, you know ... what I find most joyful about it is being surprised, having no idea what’s going to happen and seeing what happens and hoping that something interesting happens. That’s what it’s all about.”
Muldoon did not get in touch with the Halappanavar family while writing the libretto, although the director Alan Gilsenan has been in communication with them more recently. Do the creators think the Halappanavar family might travel to Ireland to see the opera? Sankaram says they would be warmly welcomed. The question also makes her think back to her work with rape survivor Mukthar Mai, who did come to see a live performance of the piece based on her ordeal.
“What she said afterwards was that it was difficult for her to see those experiences reenacted on stage. But then when the lights came on and there were people standing and clapping around her, she realised there had been all of these people with her the whole time.”
Muldoon says it would be “fabulous” if the Halappanavar family felt able to come, that the opera is a “loving and honouring” portrayal of her. “But it could be quite painful, you never know how people are going to be able to deal with something like that”.
What do they hope audiences will take from the work? “I hope it’s a reminder for people that these rights are fragile. In the United States, we felt comfortable, and then that right was taken away,” says Sankaram. “I hope it’s also inspiring for people who hear it to know that change can be affected, but that it also has to be protected and that it’s very much an ongoing thing.”
She hopes Custom of the Coast travels to the United States “because we could use that message here as well”.
Muldoon agrees with Sankaram, saying “all art is political whether we want to believe it or not”. But he also strikes a note of caution regarding the danger of sermonising through opera or other artforms. “I didn’t set out to make a particular point ... I agree with John Keats, who reminded us that we have difficulties with art that has designs on us, just as we have difficulty with people who have designs on us.
“When you can see people want to make you go in a particular direction, we actually don’t like that, we shy away from it. And I think the same is true of art. I hope it will raise issues that are important in society but I would say the main ambition of this piece is actually to be itself and allow a space in which the ideas may resonate.”
Custom of the Coast is at St Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny on August 8th.
