San Francisco Opera Dream of the Red Chamber Reviews

New operas are non perhaps equally rare equally sometimes made out to be, but it is nevertheless hard to underestimate the significance of Vivid Sheng'southward Dream of the Ruby Bedchamber appearing at the Hong Kong Arts Festival so soon later on its premiere at the San Francisco opera final Autumn.

This San Francisco-Hong Kong co-product is an adaption of the classical eighteenth-century Chinese novel, with an English-linguistic communication libretto past playwright David Henry Hwang and the composer. Those fortunate enough to secure a ticket for one of the entirely sold-out performances of this example of contemporary East-Due west cultural fusion, were therefore witnessing a slice of musical history of the sort that rarely happens in Hong Kong.

The sprawling novel (oft compared to State of war & Peace) with hundreds of characters has been condensed to a libretto with fewer than a dozen and which focuses on the love triangle betwixt the sensitive Bao Yu, the unworldly scion of an aristocratic family whose best days seem behind it, and his 2 cousins Dai Yu and Bao Chai. Both are beautiful, but Bao Yu finds his soulmate in the poetic and ethereal Dai Yu. Bao Chai, nevertheless, is the better political and financial match and Bao Yu's mother maneuvers to take them married. It ends desperately, although not quite as a traditional tragedy.

The performances and production were just about all one could wish for. The product itself was visually arresting and cleverly designed to accommodate the multiple scene changes. The singers, led by the relative veteran Chinese tenor Shi Yijie—well-known for his elegant belcanto performances in Europe—and relative newcomer soprano Pureum Jo, brought beauty, enthusiasm and pathos to their roles. The Hong Kong Philharmonic under conductor Muhai Tang played to the standard anybody has come to expect.

But, while noting all the times that critics have been wrong nearly new operas in the by, I must admit to having been left bemused past Dream of the Red Sleeping accommodation. Any consideration of the work itself must, at least implicitly, deal with such questions equally "What is opera?", "What should modern opera be?" and if we are to stick to the Western tradition, every bit this opera does, "What is 'Chinese' (as opposed to Italian, French, High german or another kind of) opera?"

If the primal objective were to adapt this—or any—classic Chinese tale to an international musical idiom, traditional Western opera was not the but possible pick, especially if it were to exist sung in English language. Contemporary musical theatre in general, for example, seems to be in rude health. Hits can run years and years while each twelvemonth sees new works in several languages and styles, some of which embody considerable creative and musical ambition. Long complex novels seem no inherent impediment to accommodation. Terminal year, for instance, saw—in add-on to the premiere of of Dream of the Red Chamber—the Broadway debut of Natasha, Pierre & the Neat Comet of 1812, a and then-called "electro-pop opera" rendition of (a similarly streamlined and excerpted) State of war & Peace—opera in that it is sung through. It is "popular"—Josh Groban opened; it is piece of cake to be sniffy about musical theatre, but until the twentieth-century, "opera" was too considered pop amusement too. Things change.

Composers and librettists must however have their opportunities where they tin can find them, and this commission came from the San Francisco Opera. This was, then, to be an "opera" in the traditional "opera house" sense of the term. The then general director of the San Francisco opera, David Gockley, gave his view of what Dream of the Ruddy Chamber should be when, according to the Guardian, he

expressed his desire for 'a lyrical, harmonically consonant piece with a lot of Chinese folk colour'.

He was further quoted in the South China Morning Post:

What I have tried to do with composers, including Bright Sheng, is to get them to write in a neo-romantic musical style that the public will embrace right from the beginning, without [the audition] having to accept university courses.

And that is what composer Brilliant Sheng delivered. The Los Angeles Times used the term "neo-Puccini". It might have been that. I thought I heard echoes of Korngold and some Alfano (Cyrano de Bergerac). According the the San Francisco Chronicle, Sheng said he had been inspired by Tosca, Otello and the Magic Flute.

The creative objectives the work has set for itself are ambitious: setting a classic Chinese text in an accessible Western classical musical idiom. Taken on its own, the opera'due south music is melodic, lush and expressive. Merely if Dream of the Red Chamber is an opera of the future, and then the future looks rather like the past.

The Los Angeles Times opened its review with

The world needs more Chinese opera. China needs it too. People's republic of china has some 29 opera houses. Simply Italy, Germany, the U.S. and Russian federation have more. Prc has more than architecturally notable new ones, such as the belatedly architect Zaha Hadid's spectacular Guangzhou Opera Firm, than whatsoever other state. But China does not yet have enough of its own notable opera to fill them. America can help.

Is "Chinese opera" a neo-romantic rendition of a Chinese story? And in English, no less. It might well exist that an ethnically-Chinese composer and ethnically-Chinese librettist might be more than faithful to elements of Chinese, civilisation, thought and philosophy than otherwise, but faithfulness per se is non the point of opera; if it were, then few of the world's greatest operas could be performed.

Something recognizable as "Chinese opera in the Western tradition" may well arise, equally information technology has in pop music, literature, theatre and motion-picture show, but it seems—on the face of it—unlikely that information technology will emanate from the United States.

Dream of the Red Sleeping accommodation appears, therefore, to have started out with some objectives that are at least partially incompatible: opera, just accessible; Chinese, but "international"; Chinese, but in English language. The choice of subject, furthermore, is immensely challenging: there are reasons why operatic renditions of War & Peace struggle to retain places in the standard repertoire.

The libretto lets the music down to some extent. Although the story seems almost Italian with its political and imperial intrigue, scheming relatives, a dominant mother and a doomed tenor-soprano-mezzo love triangle (in that location is even a scene of veiled mistaken identity à la Don Carlo), the libretto emphasizes state of affairs rather than drama and character development. Emotions were on the whole declaimed rather than felt and situations explained. Dai Yu is sickly, yet her condition seems to take picayune relevance to the plot: she is no Violetta or Mimì. These may well exist functions of the original novel, but musical theatre has its own exigencies.

I reason people keep on returning to the war-horses of the standard operatic—and theatrical—repertoire is the room these works requite for interpretation. One of the tests of Dream of the Red Chamber will non be that future performances are just the aforementioned, but rather that they are different. But past hitching the work to some vision of intrinsic "Chineseness", by making the production and staging such an integral function of the work, the room for interpretation is much diminished.

Shi Yijie and Pureum Jo

But in that location are passages in Dream of the Ruby Chamber which testify that it can all be washed. 1 is the soaring love duet betwixt Bao Yu and Dai Yu which contains lines whose poetic words matched the music and the emotion:

Like ii rivers leap for one ocean,

like 2 stars in one constellation…

Similarly, Dai Yu'south last aria was in plaintive harmony with the chorus while the final chorus ends on an unusual and moving pianissimo.

To judge a new work against the history of the unabridged genre is arguably rather harsh and unfair. For new plays, musicals or films, a pleasant or idea-provoking evening is usually the maximum expectation; i rarely asks whether the play will however be running a decade, to say nothing of a century, afterwards.

But one should evaluate works, whether musical theatre or novels, past the standards they set for themselves. To their credit, the composer, librettist and indeed, director, set up for themselves hither the highest of standards. And in several instances, they arguably achieved them. Only I was left wondering what Dream of the Red Chamber would have been similar had information technology been undertaken as a musical, or had the Sheng and Hwang allowed themselves to stray further from the novel, or had it been written for a Chinese rather than American audience or had at least been sung in Chinese.

One should never however permit the perfect be the enemy of the good. Dream of the Scarlet Chamber is an ambitious work that deserves to be seen, heard, pondered and discussed, especially when it can muster a cast besides-attuned to the piece of work equally this one.

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Peter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books.

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Source: https://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/dreaming-of-the-red-chamber-hong-kong-arts-festival-and-san-francisco-opera/

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