February 06
Arabian opera nights
John Allison on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Baghdad opera house
…Isle of Edena. By July 1957, in a speech back in the United States, he said: ‘I happen to be doing a cultural centre for a place where civilization was invented—that is, Iraq. Before Iraq was destroyed it was a beautiful circular city built by Harun al-Rashid, but the Mongols came from the north and practically destroyed. Now what is left of the city has struck oil and they have immense sums of money. They came bring back the city of Harun al-Rashid today. They are not likely to do it because a lot of western architects are in there already building skyscrapers all over the place, and they are going to meet the destruction that is barging in on all big western cities. So it seems to me vital over there to try and make them see how foolish it is to join that western procession.’
By harking back to the great centre of civilization founded in 762 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, a fabled city built on a perfect circle and a place of learning that reached its apex of fame under al-Rashid’s reign (Wright’s speech, quoted above, overlooked al-Mansur’s role in establishing Baghdad), the 20th-century architect was recalling the world of the Arabian Nights tales. Especially popular during his youth, Wright remained so fond of the tales (many featuring al-Rashid himself) that he decorated his children’s playhouse with a mural showing ‘The Fisherman and the Genii’. Yet Wright’s connection with the world of al-Rashid and the Arabian Nights was not a simplistic western fantasy, as detractors of the project have suggested, nor was it an example of the Orientalism soon to be decried by Edward Said. It delved deeply into Baghdad’s heritage. By making his cultural complex ‘worthy of a king’, however, Wright was bound to run into trouble. Following the military coup of July 1958, and the assassination of both Faisal II and Crown Prince Abdul Ilah, the project was rejected. Not only was it too extravagant for the military leadership, it was too closely and personally identified with the old monarchy. Nor was an opera house considered relevant.
What would it have looked like? Plans survive, but many got lost during the 1958 coup. Nezam Amery, a young Persian apprentice of Wright’s who had recently returned to Teheran and established his own practice, acted as the great architect’s Middle Eastern representative and was in Baghdad when the revolution broke out. Narrowly escaping death, he managed to save the drawings in his possession, but those of Wright’s plans that had earlier been submitted to Faisal II and the ministry responsible for the work, the Development Board, were never recovered. Unlikely though it is they could have survived the most recent carnage, it is a tantalizing thought. Echoes of them are also to be seen in the curvilinear design for the Grady Gammage Auditorium at Arizona…
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