Musicals bringing the stories of two of the Arab world’s most renowned women musicians of the 20th century, Asmahan and Dalida, to life are coming to London’s West End.
Asmahan: A New Musical Play will run on the 16th and 17th of June, while A Tribute to Dalida! will run from the 19th to 22nd of June, both at Sadler’s Wells’ Peacock Theatre.
Asmahan, a Syrian actress and singer raised in Egypt, was known for her powerful voice and achingly beautiful delivery. Her personal life was tumultuous, and her death at the age of 31 was shrouded in mystery.
Dalida, born to Italian parents in Cairo, was an Egyptian actress and singer. Singing in multiple languages, she became an international icon who sold more than 100 million records. However, her life too was fraught with tragedy.
Producer Ali Matar from AM Management and Productions told The New Arab about the two musicals: “It’s a great responsibility to showcase iconic divas and pay tribute to their enduring legacies.
“Asmahan’s story has never been told on stage, and many don’t know the significance and complexities of her life events, her music, and the influences of those around her, particularly her brother, Farid al-Atrash.
“Dalida is an icon with international appeal and is known for many things beyond her music. Bringing her music and story to life on a West End stage will be a truly special tribute to her legacy.”
The New Arab spoke to some of the talented musicians taking on the main roles in these two shows.
Asmahan: ‘No jukebox musical’
Lena Chamamyan is a natural fit for the role of Asmahan in many ways. She is trained in classical music and sings tarab; both artists were from minority communities in Syria (Asmahan was Syrian Druze, while Lena is Syrian-Armenian); both left Syria during wartime; and both found a home and community in Egypt.
“Whenever I have a chance, I come and stay in Cairo,” Lena, who splits most of her time between the Egyptian capital and Paris, told The New Arab.
“It’s like not having a home, but having a land that you love, a place that you love, to create community and create your own home — I did this, like her. The more I know about her, the more connected to her I feel.”
Lena holds Asmahan in high regard, but she particularly admires her innovation as a musician and her strong will.
“She and the composers she worked with at the time opened the doors to Arabic music, taking on a new form. It wasn’t just the classical Arabic form — it changed into classical, into opera, into tango,” Lena said.
“She used to work with new ideas, and even if the composer was well-known, she would work with him on new ways of singing, new forms of the song. She was a pioneer.
“I don’t think there has been a pioneering singer who hasn’t had a very strong character, and she was one of them for sure.”
Lena said that both she and Asmahan are “dreamers” and innovators (Lena’s distinct style blends folk, jazz, pop, and classical sounds, Western and Arabic), but they also share more profound similarities.
“We’ve kind of had the same struggles, the same loneliness, the same melancholy, the same nostalgia, and the same homeland,” she explained.
She channels some of that connection in an original song she wrote for the production, called Princess of the Mountain.
“It’s about the loneliness and the glory, and the contrast of living with both of these,” she explained.
“It’s about longing for home, about having Farid around her, about her relationship to her dreams, the sea, and the prophecy that she is going to die there.”
Lena may be a great match for the role, but that doesn’t mean preparation for the show has been without its challenges.
Though she has theatrical training, this is Lena’s first time performing a lead role in a musical, and Asmahan’s music is a challenge for any singer to master.
“Asmahan’s repertoire is one of the hardest in Arabic music. Her songs might not be the longest, but a five-minute song is loaded with technique and feeling,” Lena said.
Central to Asmahan is the relationship between the songstress and her brother Farid al-Atrash, an icon of Arab music and film in his own right and one of the composers who wrote music for her.
Egyptian-American jazz musician and composer Ahmed Harfoush will play Farid.
A musician for much of his life, Ahmed moved to London ten years ago, forming the Harfoush Jazz Band as well as The Egyptian Jazz Projekt, a jazz revival of songs from Egyptian films from the 1950s — almost indisputably the golden age of Egyptian cinema.
Farid has been among Ahmed and the Egyptian Jazz Projekt’s biggest influences, and he sings his songs often as part of the project.
Ahmed has also had theatre training in London and musical training at the American University in Cairo. This is his first musical theatre role, but it seems like a natural development, all things considered.
Asmahan is a musical of two halves. The first half sees Asmahan seek sanctuary in those closest to her, including her brother, while hounded by a journalist. The second takes place in her imagination, in which she plays her dream concert featuring some of her most well-loved songs.
Asmahan’s relationship with her brother kept her going while she suffered depressive episodes and thoughts of taking her own life, Ahmed told The New Arab.
“Farid was around to save her from her suicidal and depressive moments. His music healed her, he composed for her, he supported her,” he said.
One song featured in the show is a duet between Asmahan and Farid called The Sun Has Lost Its Light.
“It was composed based on her spells of depression. She’s singing that there is no more sunlight, and he comes in to say ‘no, everything is OK’... It’s very interesting,” Ahmed said of the Atrash-composed piece.
“It’s a very bizarre song — no chorus, no repetition, just four bits of singing that you have to learn.”
Ahmed hopes the musical will expose Asmahan and Farid al-Atrash to a wider audience, Arab or otherwise.
“It will also bring Egyptians and other Arabs closer to Asmahan by bringing more insight into her persona, fears, dreams, and music,” he said.
“It’s not a jukebox musical that is like ‘hey, let’s sing all the songs’ — it’s more serious than that.”
Dalida: ‘Each song is a piece of her puzzle’
French-Lebanese actress Mikayella Stephan has loved Dalida for as long as she can remember.
“I remember having a cassette tape in the car that was always on repeat,” she told The New Arab from her home in Beirut.
“I wanted to be a singer and on stage because of her. When I grew up, I had long blonde hair… she was my idol for some time.”
Trained in music and theatre from a young age, her big break came when she appeared in a major play in Lebanon and won the pan-Arabic music award Murex D’Or in 2014, raising her international profile and putting her on the radar of producers overseas.
She performed in a small but successful Dalida tribute show in London a few years ago, which has now been developed into the musical we will see performed at the Peacock Theatre, upgraded to what Mikayella calls the “international stage.”
“I’m going to be focused in the same way that I was the first time, but the excitement is much bigger,” Mikayella added.
Featuring live music, choreography, and visual projections, the show charts Dalida’s rise from winner of Miss Egypt in 1954 to international superstar.
Aside from the more typical preparations for a musical — an in-depth character study, script study, and breath training — preparation for the role of Dalida has the particular challenge of performing songs in multiple languages, even for someone like Mikayella, who speaks multiple languages herself.
Dalida recorded songs in 12 languages — even Flemish and Japanese. This is a testament to Dalida’s hardworking nature and desire not to be boxed in, Mikayella said, and part of what made her unique.
Mikayella will be performing songs in what is still a very impressive five languages — Arabic, English, French, Italian, and Spanish. Some of Dalida’s biggest hits will feature, including Je Suis Malade, Love in Portofino, Paroles Paroles, Helwa Ya Baladi, and Salma Ya Salama.
“She was incredible. She was a very hardworking artist with a lot of ambition, even though she had a very dramatic life. She was a real fighter, and I love her for that,” Mikayella said of Dalida.
“She was real and authentic. She really showed her pain. She never lied in interviews; she was always straightforward. When she was on stage, she didn’t care what people had to say about her.”
Dalida overcame professional rejection as an actress in France to reach international success as a singer. Her personal life was also fraught, with the lives of several of her romantic partners ending in suicide. She would go on to take her own life in May 1987, at the age of 54.
It’s a life story that necessitates emotional sensitivity, and Dalida! will go beyond the songstress’s glamour and impressive repertoire to ensure that the production and performance are of appropriate emotional depth, Mikayella said.
“It’s a very rich show. I don’t think there has been a show for Dalida in this depth before… It’s really going into the intimate, the intimate Dalida,” she added.
“You’ll get to know the woman behind the songs. Behind every song is a story. She never sang anything that was just out of the blue. Every song tells a little of her story, her character, her feelings.
“The songs are like the pieces of a puzzle, the puzzle of Dalida. We’ll try to show her whole picture.”
Shahla Omar is a freelance journalist based in London. She was previously a staff journalist and news editor at The New Arab
Follow her on X: @shahlasomar