Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Poems of Rabindranath Tagore and those of his French counterparts in the nineteenth century are going to blend with the strums of Sitar at Asian Art Museum in Paris.
A Sitarist of international repute from Bhopal Smita Nagdev will play Sitar and French poets and artists Robert Bensimon, Corine and Pierre will recite the poems.
The concert was to be held in 2020 but it had to be postponed because of the corona pandemic, Nagdev said. This is her first trip to Europe after the pandemic.
The French poets whose compositions will be recited are: Arteur Rimbaud, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Saint John Perse and Rene Char, she said.
According to Nagdev, the French were so enthusiastic about the concert that they wanted it to happen for two days instead of one day and, now, it will be held on May 20 and May 21.
On May 20, it will be held in the auditorium of the Asian Art Museum and on May 21 at the Gallery where the statues are kept.
The French are so fond of the language of the other countries that they wished her to recite
Tagore’s poems in Hindi, the Sitarist added.
She will read out Tagore’s ‘The Gardener of Love’ and a paragraph from one of his novels on music and that it will be a two-hour concert.
A Jugalbandi of Sitar and poetry will take place for the first time, and that it will be an experience in itself for her, Nagdev said.
She further said that her French friends had advised her to wear sari to represent Indian culture at the time of playing Sitar.
