DR.E.R.Sarachchandra’s Maname (1956) and Sinhbahau (1961) are the finest creative achievements of the contemporary Sinhala theater. I begin with this assertion in order to explain why, in this article on Ceylon’s outstanding modern dramatist, I intend to confine myself to discussion of his two major plays. And it is their intrinsic dramatic and literary achievement that I wish to consider here rather than their place in the evolution of our theater- though Maname, especially, has been a seminal work through its influence on younger playwrights and its education to the theater audience. Of Dr.Sarachchandra, he has “created the taste by which he has to be enjoyed”.
It is impossible, however, to discuss Maname and Sinhabahu without examining their dramatic form –one which finds no exact parallel in other traditions of theater. When Maname was first performed, it was variously described as a revival of the form of folk drama known as the nadagam and as the creation of an operatic form in Sinhala. Neither description is really adequate. In writing Maname Dr.Sarachchandra was considerably influenced by the folk-drama tradition and borrowed some of its conventions – notably the use of a pote- guru or narrator and the circular movement of the players in traversing the stage. (As in many of the older traditions of theater, the audience of the nadagam sat in a ring). For the music of Maname, Dr.Sarachchandra used traditional nadagam melodies ; Sinhabahu too , derives some of its music from the same source. But in spite of these affiliations, there are fundamental differences between Maname and Sinhabahu and the older folk drama. The dramatic concentration and economy, the accomplished theatrical craft, the intensity of poetic life, and the unity of words, music and action in Dr.Sarachchandra’s plays cannot be paralleled in the nadagama; and it is these qualities that make his drama a form of art in a way that the folk drama is not. It is wrong, I now think, even to describe the form of Maname and Sinhabahu as an “adaptation of the nadagama for the modern stage”. It would be more correct to say that Dr.Sarachchandra has derived certain elements from the nadagama in creating what is really a new dramatic form; from this point of view, his relation to the nadagama-tradition is rather like that of Andre Obey to the medieval miracle play or that of Yeats to the Japanese No-Drama.
Should Maname and Sinhabahu, then, be described as operas? If all we meant by this term was that the words of the plays were throughout sung, not spoken, there would be nothing wrong in applying it to Dr.Sarachchandra’s drama. But I think it important to recognize that Maname and Sinhabahu belong to a different dramatic genre from Western opera-different because of the dominance, in Dr.Sarachchandra’s plays, of the words over the music. I write without any close knowledge of musical technicalities, but I believe it is true to say that the opera in the Western musical tradition is not merely drama set to music; it is a form in which the heart of the drama is in the music, both vocal and orchestral. One has only to think of the way in which a dramatic conflict is expressed through the clash different vocal lines in a Mozart opera, or of the role of recurrent leitmotifs in defining the dramatic themes in any characteristic work of Wagner. These are part of the essential language of opera-a language that is musical rather than literary; and in comparison with these resources of the operatic form, the libretto occupies only a secondary place. Or rather, the libretto is important only in providing a framework of plot and character which acquire their full dimension in the music; but the words of the libretto-the words in dissociation with the music-may be lifeless, banal or trivial without detracting from the greatness of an opera (the libretto for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is an excellent example of this). It is the compose not the librettist, who is the dominant creative artist in the writing of opera, as the form is known in the Western tradition, while Maname and Sinhabahu are primarily the creations of a literary artist. But would the difference have been bridged if Dr.Sarachchandra had a composer of equal creative ability as his collaborator, or if he had himself been composer as well as librettist? I think not, because the different relationship between words and music in Maname or Sinhabahu, as compared with Western opera, springs ultimately from the fundamental divergence between the post-renaissance musical traditions of the West and the Eastern traditions from which our indigenous music derives. If we were to attempt to describe the vocal music of Maname and Sinhabahu in the terms used in the Western opera, we should have to say that it was confined essentially to two forms- aria and recitative( corresponding to the sindu and vachanaya).There are also the tharga- the duets or trios – but these are not basically different in their musical form from the arias, since a duet in Maname or Sinhabahu consists of melodies ( or often the same melody) sung alternately by two voices ( as is the duet between Princess and Forest King in Maname after The Prince’s death). We may also have the same melody sung in unison by several voices, as in the numerous airs in which the chorus accompanies a solo singer. But there is nothing in Maname or Sinhabahu corresponding to the duets, trios or quartets of Western opera where several different but concurrent melodic lines are intertwined with each other. Nor does the instrumental music of Maname or Sinhabahu, whch is used as an accompaniment to the voice, as a dance accompaniment or a theatrical effect, have the same status as the orchestral part of a Western opera which is an independent voice, at different times supporting, clashing with or dominating the singers, or singing alone and in its own right. All this is of coarse related to the fact that the music of Maname and Sinhabahu, like that of most Eastern musical traditions, is fundamentally melodic in character, while post-renaissance Western music derives much of its life from its harmonic and contrapuntal richness. No one should suppose here that I believe Eastern music to be inferior because of this difference.