‘One voice sings, thousands hear the song’: Portland Opera’s production of ‘Thumbprint’

The story of Mukhtar Mai completes its Portland run with performances March 24 and 26.
Samina Aslam as Mukhtar Mai in Portland Opera’s 2023 production of Kamala Sankaram’s Thumbprint. Photo by Christine Dong/Portland Opera.

For once, the soprano survives.

Different from many operas where the tragic and transgressive soprano dies, Thumbprint’s heroine lives. Portland Opera’s current production tells the real-life story of Mukhtar Mai (soprano Samina Aslam), the Pakistani woman who chooses life over traditionally shame-induced suicide after she is gang-raped for a supposed “honor” crime. Thumbprint completes a four-show run with a 7:30 pm March 24 performance and a 2 pm March 26 matinee at the Newmark Theatre.

In order to “restore order” and to compensate for her younger brother’s alleged sex crime involving a girl from the Mastoi tribe, Mukhtar’s effort is nightmarishly turned into a four-man tribe-sanctioned rape. The role of the arrogant Faiz, who runs the Mastoi show, is performed by rising-star tenor Alok Kumar, who skillfully juggles several roles. Each singer, other than the protagonist, sings several parts, underlining that Thumbprint is neither a big nor elaborate production, though it carries a huge human-rights message. Portland Opera’s four-performance run March 18-26 marks only the fifth time the show has been produced in nine years after the opera premiered in 2014 at New York City’s Nagelberg Theatre. 

Alok Kumar, Omar Najmi, Indira Mahajan, Neil Balfour, Sitara Razaqi Lones, Priya Judge, Samina Aslam, and Leela Subramaniam in Portland Opera’s 2023 production of Sankaram’s Thumbprint. Photo by Christine Dong/Portland Opera.

In this 90-minute piece, Susan Yankowitz’s poetic libretto and Kamala Sankaram’s Indian-influenced fusion music mesh masterfully. Every character is Muslim, so no racial or religious issues fuel the conflict. But a class/caste power struggle does exist. The Mastoi are rich land-owners in Pakistan’s Punjab province, and Mukhtar’s family belongs to a poor clan. “Truth dies in the mouth of power,” Mukhtar’s family sings. 

Though Mukhtar is illiterate, unmarried, 30 years old (the opera does not reveal her age), and devastated for her family’s honor after the rape, she pursues her rapists, after a lot of  hesitation, by going to the police with the encouragement of her family and of her imam (tenor Omar Najmi, who also plays several other roles). At the opera’s pivotal point, she is given courage and a heavy-duty buck-up talk by her mother (well-cast soprano Indira Mahajan), who helps her find strength when Mukhtar considers ending her life. “Remember your name!” the mother sings. “Mukhtar” means self-respecting, strong.

Indira Mahajan as Mother and Neil Balfour as Father in Portland Opera's 2023 production of Kamala Sankaram's THUMBPRINT. Photo by Christine Dong/Portland Opera.
Indira Mahajan as Mother and Neil Balfour as Father in Portland Opera’s 2023 production of Kamala Sankaram’s “Thumbprint.” Photo by Christine Dong/Portland Opera.

Not knowing how to read or write, or that Pakistan has a constitution, Mukhtar puts her thumbprint on documents to start the legal process. The Mastoi tribe criminals, which include two elders, are sentenced to death, and in the end of the opera, Mukhtar starts a school for girls with a measly check she is given by the government. This starts her on her journey of human-rights activism, still going on today.

It was 2002 when the rape took place, and global news took note when the trial occurred. Where did she get the courage to speak out? she was asked by reporters. “Someone has to be the first drop,” she sings. “One voice sings, thousands hear the song.”

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Several multi-talented artists contributed to the opera. Composer Sankaram is also a coloratura soprano. In Thumbprint, she gives Mukhtar a role in which her voice grows stronger and stronger. At the beginning, she sings mostly in ensembles, especially with her mother and sister Annu (soprano Leela Subramaniam). As the opera builds, she hits high and then higher notes, embellishes them, and eventually proves herself a stage-stealing star. “The opera is about voice,” Sankaram explained during a pre-opera talk, “and how Mukhtar finds her voice.”

Samina Aslam as Mukhtar Mai, Indira Mahajan as Mother, and Leela Subramaniam as Annu in Portland Opera's 2023 production of Kamala Sankaram's THUMBPRINT. Photo by Christine Dong/Portland Opera.
Samina Aslam as Mukhtar Mai, Indira Mahajan as Mother, and Leela Subramaniam as Annu in Portland Opera’s 2023 production of Kamala Sankaram’s “Thumbprint.” Photo by Christine Dong/Portland Opera.

With an Indian father and American mother, the high-energy and highly educated Sankaram studied European music and spent eight years learning the sitar. (The composer and professor also has an eclectic music group called Bombay Rickshaw). Thumbprint, she said, is “a fusion of two traditions,” blending raga-based music with European harmony, though little harmony comes through in the men’s singing. She adds clapping, part of southeast Asian musical tradition, and repetitive chanting that surfaces as haunting background music. Instruments include a Western drum kit, tabla, piano, harmonium, flute and strings in an ensemble that plays onstage, partially hidden by a scrim constructed of material that resembles slender bamboo pieces. Maria Badstue, who was adopted from India and grew up in Copenhagen, conducted. Her pace was deliberate and painstakingly respectful of the score. The opera began with 5 minutes of silence, making the music even more dramatic when it finally began.

Shaped by New York based collective, DOTS, the clever set incorporated a bi-level design. Domestic life goes on below, and crimes and confrontation happen above. Israeli director Omer Ben Sedia manages to efficiently move a cast whose members morph into various characters up and down the stairs, behind and in front of the scrim, without singers colliding. To further enhance the action, two dancers (Portlander Priya Judge and Sitara Razaqi Lones) cover the stage with movements choreographed by Portlander Subashini Ganesan-Forbes. They added an expressionistic dimension though some dance cynics might say they were a distraction and easy enough to ignore. 

Mukhtar has become a symbol of hope for oppressed women, but her story is far from over. Her website is down and we wonder why, and the Pakistani government has limited her travel and appearances. Ultimately the lower court called the gang-rape an act of terrorism, and after years of legal wrangling and appeals, her rapists were eventually acquitted. The opera does not go there; it stops with the first conviction.

Many women who have been victimized by rape are fearful to report it, and many men have gone unpunished—all over the world, not just in Southeast Asia. As composer Sankaram said in her pre-opera talk, despite Mukhtar’s work and story, the world remains in a sorry state for women’s rights and humanity.

This review originally appeared in Classical Voice North America, March 22.

Also see ‘Thumbprint’: Crossing cultures, dramatizing oppression, Brett Campbell’s ArtsWatch story about the background to and making of the opera, and Stage & Studio: Priti Gandhi & ‘Thumbprint,’ Dmae Lo Roberts’ podcast interview with Portland Opera’s artistic director about Thumbprint and her own opera career.

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Angela Allen writes about the arts, especially opera, jazz, chamber music, and photography. Since 1984, she has contributed regularly to online and print publications, including Oregon ArtsWatch, The Columbian, The San Diego Union-Tribune, Willamette Week, The Oregonian, among others. She teaches photography and creative writing to Oregon students, and in 2009, served as Fishtrap’s Eastern Oregon Writer-in-Residence. A published poet and photographer, she was elected to the Music Critics Association of North America’s executive board and is a recipient of an NEA-Columbia Journalism grant. She earned an M.A. in journalism from University of Oregon in 1984, and 30 years later received her MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Portland with her scientist husband and often unwieldy garden. Contact Angela Allen through her website.

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