By Minahil Makhdoom
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s first Sufi Opera singer Saira Peter and famous folk singer Sain Khawar would perform at Islamabad Club on Friday. The event was being organized by Hunerkada for the first time along with fusion of eastern and western music.
Born in Karachi, Saira Peter has lived in London for the last 19 years. She trained as an operatic singer under Paul Knight, who was a student of English composer Benjamin Britten, a legend in Western classical music. In an interview with APP, she told that these days she was working on a Sufi Opera, a famous story of Sindh province on Umar Marvi and it would be in English language as she was planning to stage it in London.
Se said an English writers committee had nominated her father Zafar Francis as a main writer of this opera. He would write 35 songs for it. ‘I am proud to be trained by Paul Knight and consider him as my master,’ she opined. The unique genre of Sufi Opera she performs is a true labour of love, bringing together her training in the western classical tradition of music and her love for Sufi poetry.
‘Sufism is an important part of the Pakistani culture. Sufi poets such as Bulleh Shah and Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai have woven beautiful messages of peace and love in their poetry and I wanted to introduce this custom in the western society in its own style of music and language,’ she said.
