FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, MONI OVADIA’S MUSICAL

The best-known cantor of Yiddish culture in Italy tests his skills for the first time against a previously written musical with a structure all its own. Moni Ovadia is bringing his most popular show to the stage with a company of retired Ukrainian dancers, the magnificent presence and voice of Lee Colbert, the TheaterOrchestra, and, naturally, himself in the leading role

Similarly to the disquieting character in Chagall’s paintings, the protagonist of one of the masterpieces of American musical theatre risks leading “a trembling life” on the roofs of the set’s crooked houses. Moni Ovadia talks with us about the main character’s political and ethical choices.

“One of my stylistic peculiarities – explains Ovadia – is to have music on the set, with musicians playing the part of a sort of dramatic chorus. Twelve years ago I put together a group of musician-actors, the TheaterOrchestra, which slowly but surely has experienced remarkable growth. For Fiddler on the Roof the group took the music originally written for twenty-five instruments and adapted it for an eight-member orchestra. The style of my musical theatre comes out of Yiddish theatre, or rather the musical theatre that was the foundation of the American musical scene of the 20^th century. The writers of musicals, with the exception of Cole Porter, were all Jewish or of Eastern European origins.

We wrote the songs in Yiddish because I believe it’s important to build a future for a culture that was eradicated in Europe; because this language has a particular atmosphere, humor, and sensibility about it, and was wiped out together with its people (although in a few circles it’s still spoken in day-to-day conversation). It is part of a culture with which I have occupied myself for years, a culture that knows how to express, in its own way, the universal significance of the human being’s fragility, of exile, the ability to place oneself between the heavens and the earth, and to live across borders. A great culture of people without nations, armies, nationalistic obsessions; of little people, poor and simple, that produced great teachers of a highly sophisticated level of thought - all the way from Freud to Kafka - and pollinated a European continent that in the past did everything possible to disown the culture’s merits. I therefore believe that that world, with its history, offers a fountain of luminous resources of a human and stylistic nature. For example, the freedom in Yiddish theatre to move from dialogue to song, rhythm, and dance without interruption, outside any Aristotelian division of genres, almost certainly contributed to German expressionist cinema and theatre. I think that even Brecht was influenced by that culture. 

This musical was somehow a scheduled rendezvous, although it was difficult to get there since a musical, in terms of financial commitment, is a rather burdensome enterprise. It was only thanks to a young producer like Lorenzo Vitali that we succeeded. It’s a musical based on the most famous novel in Yiddish literature, written by Yiddish literature’s most prominent author Sholom Aleichem. Working with a company whose members were mostly from Eastern Europe, I rethought the story’s framework looking to obtain a stylistic interpretation. All the Ukrainian dancers are retired: I wanted real people; I didn’t want to show the glossy look of the younger talent. The dancers performing show a prodigious virtuosity at times, but only have a little of that exhibitionist glossiness of youth.  In addition I wanted the melancholy stare of people who have lived. My dancers are wonderful; the story itself is told in their faces, together with grace and virtuosity. The oldest of them is 52 years old, 12 of which he has been inactive as a dancer. With his weight at 140 kilos, he dances like a devil. Another one of the dancers still performs leaps and does splits in midair. He’s the youngest but he’ll be retiring at year’s end. I made a choice to emphasize expressiveness and humanity. There’s a Russian, a Hungarian, and a Gipsy. I find this to be very important; for me this theatrical company is a cultural and political symbol. 

One of the things that excites me most these days is the enlargement of the European Union to the east because there is great wealth in those areas. These are regions that were humiliated at first by the self-proclaimed real socialism, and then abandoned by a savage mafia-like capitalism that has devastated a huge number of people. It’s an area of great human potential. I have dreamt for a number of years of forming a cosmopolitan theatrical company. Italy needs this type of environment to get away from the present suffocation of cultural and ethical perspectives, and in order to equip itself so that it doesn’t experience integration with locally based fear and hysteria. Great things could come of the encounter between the enormous Italian cultural tradition and the other great tradition of Eastern Europe. Every culture is made up of encounters. I am fortunate enough to be an Italian born in Bulgaria with multiple origins: Mediterranean, Slavic, and further back, in the Hispano-Jewish world. To fight this battle I play the small part of the thespian as well as I know, and as well as I can, hoping that someday some establishment will understand the meaning of my efforts. With Fiddler on the Roof, a 42-member company heads into action. 24 of its members are on stage, and it is a signal that something can be done beginning in our country. 

One of the reasons I wanted to do this show was the sublime character of the protagonist Tevye the Milkman. He’s a natural antifundamentalist who chooses love and life over the rules and tradition he nonetheless loves. There are two super- commandments in the Torah. In one God says to the Hebrew: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life.” The second one speaks of the complex precepts that regulate the way a Jew acts in any situation, whether ethical, alimentary, or sexual: “You shall live in them” rightly said the teachers of Judaism. This is because commandments are for life and not life that is for the commandments. On the other hand, the fundamentalist is always ready to sacrifice life (possibly someone else’s), spilling blood just to follow rigid rules that hence become idols and totems. Tevye concludes his journey as a Jew by facing the difficult task of giving his consensus for his daughter’s Christian wedding to a non-Jew. At the time it was as if the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor married the son of an SS officer. Tevye gives his blessing to the two and to their life together because the son-in-law is a good person and has rejected the world of violence towards the Jews. It’s a wonderful and simple story about mothers, fathers, daughters, engaged couples, and sons-in-law, set in the shadow of an exiled people’s history.             

The story, written by Aleichem in 1905, is set during the unrest of the first Russian Revolution, which rampages the little village until it is almost entirely disintegrated. The revolutionary surge had a violent counter reaction, and the Jews paid a very high price because of it. It wasn’t just the pogroms, the apparently unorganized persecution of the Jews that were in reality paid for by the Czar’s police, and that were carried out from the end of the nineteenth century all the way to the first two years of the First World War. Historians talk about one and a half million Jews killed, about deportations, persecution, and starvation. It was during this tumultuous climate that the great and terrible epic migration to the Americas started. The beauty of this musical, and the book above all, is the this story of little people in the midst of tumultuous events, the greatness of the small and fragile individual who is ethically strong and who succeeds in avoiding the trap of violence. 

In the face of violence and expulsion, the young and impetuous village innkeeper incites everyone to rebellion uttering the notorious phrase - the most misinterpreted in the history of religious thought - “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.” Tevye replies “but what have you understood? In what kind of a world do you want to live, in a world where everyone is blind and toothless?” The biblical verse is, in fact, badly translated. The correct version reads “Eye beneath an eye,” i.e. adequate compensation for damages suffered. Eye for an eye retaliation was never practiced between Jews. It’s normal that the innkeeper wishes to react because he is an impulsive young man who doesn’t want to suffer under the abuse of power, but Tevye knows well where that logic leads. 

With nothing Hollywood-like in the production, not even revolving platforms, our musical is a family painting that unfolds on a single set masterfully devised by Giovanni Carluccio. It’s the most popular show I’ve ever done and can nonetheless be read on different levels, or, at least, that’s what I hope. The songs are very beautiful; the stirring choreography is under the supervision of Elizabeth BoecKe, a Dutch citizen living in Italy and teaching at the Paolo Grassi School. The orchestra is one of my traveling companions, made up of great soloists that know how to challenge themselves. Elisa Savi’s costumes are the most daring thing in this production; they are the transformation of Chagall’s pictorial work into dress material. The light design is Luigi Saccomandi’s, one of our best light designers. I’ve already talked about the dancers. A few of the actor-singers have been working with me for a long time, such as Lee Colbert, our most dazzling voice. There are young actresses, and a short Russian in the role of the butcher. On stage the actors speak in clear Italian but with various accents, just like the Italian we hear these days, characterized by Russian, Polish, African, and Arab accents. We are moving towards pluralism, and in passing from one generation to the next, the curious and very perceptible sound of exile is present, along with language change: the mixing of one language’s intonations with the meaning of another.”