SPIRIT OF SIAM

Thai ghost story meets grand opera in Mae Naak

- ■ WILLIAM NIALL MORRIS

In Thailand, family is sacred and mothers above all are revered. Perhaps this is why the tale of Mae Naak — the young mother who dies giving birth — has resonated so deeply within the national psyche for well over a century.

Refusing to leave her riverside home at Phra Khanong in Bangkok, her defiant spirit lingers, constructing a life of domestic bliss based entirely on illusion. When her husband Mak returns from fighting in a war, he too becomes convinced that his wife is still alive, refusing to believe the villagers who try to tell him otherwise.

To set Mae Naak as an opera was the ingenious — and possibly controversial — decision of composer and Thai National Artist Somtow Sucharitkul.

The work was premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 2003, followed by a successful run in London, where the press called it "a stunning work that fuses European opera style with Thai folkloric music".

This underrated jewel was presented earlier this month by Opera Siam in the theatre of King's College International School Bangkok, directed by the composer himself.

When a composer writes his own libretto and is also a world-famous writer of horror fiction, it is perhaps inevitable that he will lean into the genre. The result is most definitely not La Bohème.

I cannot recall ever seeing someone's entrails dragged from them as they let out a piercing operatic yelp — not even in the most radical production of Madama Butterfly. As such the opera Mae Naak treads a fine line between tragic drama and B-movie comedy.