He Hui's Met debut

A belated word of congratulations to the Shanghai-born He Hui (何慧) for booking her Met debut. As Aida, she is scheduled to sing opposite Salvatore Licitra's Radamès in Sonja Frisell's production in Spring 2010.

Magic Flute

After a brief hiatus, opera returns to the NCPA's main stage with Mozart's Magic Flute, a co-production of the Centre, the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, and Opera Hong Kong. It is a work of multilingual art: Emanuel Schikaneder's German libretto, recitative in English, stage props with letter art in both languages (at the gate of Sarastro's temple, the words "Nature" and "Vernun"), and a good number of [improvised?] Chinese injected into the recitative (all by Papageno). The production team of Warren Mok, Chen Ping and Per Larsen adds conspicuous Chinese elements, including Papageno's Chinese hunter costume, a dragon to replace the serpent at the beginning of Act I, and twelve Chinese zodiac animals (with funky fluorescent heads and tails) to be called up by Tamino's flute.

In yet another evidence of the production's deference to the fluorescent plasticism of the 60s and 70s, the chorus in both acts carries fluorescent light sabers that remind me of Achim Freyer's Act I in Walkure. Some design elements are simple but effective: the chief temple is depicted by a piece of backdrop drapery with nothing but a simple printed circle, while the pyramid scene is decorated with another piece of drapery with an encircled triangle (the circle and triangle depicting, respectively, Sarastro's temple and the pyramid). Other designs are more elaborate, including the penultimate scene where Monostatos and the Queen are to slowly climb a flight of ascending stairs, only to be cast into eternal darkness with the stair prop moving sideways to stage right and lighting dimming to a ghostly effect. The glockenspiel prop is a little bit more curious, because instead of the more traditional handheld glock or tuned tam-tam, it is depicted more metaphorically with what looks like (at least from my balcony seat) a bronze sistrum or a muffed-up sleigh bell.

Mimma Briganti's Queen makes a spectacular entrance from above using wires and dazzles with a fantastic start to "O zittre nicht". In an ending that sadly mirrors her entrance, she crash lands (pun intended) by chicken scratching the high F. Even though she would end her evening by blowing her other four Fs in quite dramatic fashion in "Der Hölle Rache", the audience nevertheless appreciates her effort with a gracious round of applause. Eric Margiore's Tamino is too lightweight for NCPA's monstrous space, and is evidently overwhelmed by Inna Dukach's Pamina in the duet "Wir wandelten durch Feuersgluten" and in the quartet "Der, welcher...Beschwerden".

I always believe Magic Flute's dramatic crux rests with Papageno's comedic overtones, and in this respect baritone Brian Montgomery does not disappoint. He is sassy and funny, and is able to lid up lighting designer David Jacques' rather somber ambiance. In terms of singing, Montgomery's "Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja" sounds hesitant and tired (probably due to his need to climb up and down the set), but he fully redeems himself with a good-natured and well-sung "Pa-Pa-Pa".

Able to radiate Pamina's two distinct personalities --naive playfulness and pensive melancholy --Inna Dukach is perfect for the role and is the star of the evening. Her voice is deep, with a rounded vibrato -- listening to her is like pouring sweet honey over warm caprino while candle light flickers in an air of subtle evening lust. But I digress.

Mika Kares steals some of Dukach's stars with a commanding Sarastro, delivering "O Isis und Osiris" with plenty of regal power and paternal authority. Meanwhile, the three ladies are feisty and well-acted but sound at times disoriented and lacking tonal balance. Conductor Jari Hämäläinen frequently modulates his speed, with Queen's both arias running under tempo and "Der Arme kann..." running dramatically ahead -- with the latter's acceleration rewarding the audience with a more dramatic interchange among Tamino, Papageno, and the three ladies.

To be honest, it's hard for me to be awed by any contemporary Magic Flute production, and this one is no exception: it seems to me nearly impossible to cast for the production today --Magic Flute requires a bright leggiero tenor and a lyric soprano against a scintillating Queen and baritone who can both sing and act. (How about JDF, Fleming, Damrau and Pisaroni?) Nevertheless, I must admit this Magic Flute is still quite entertaining, with some interesting multicultural elements and a few laughs ("北京烤鴨", or Peking Duck making a cameo in Papageno's recitative) that make the evening seem shorter than it really is.

Romance of the West Chamber, a Kunqu classic

Over the years I have attended plenty of Kunqu classics, including the Peony Pavilion, The Jade Hairpin Tale, and The Palace of Eternity. But Romance of the West Chamber (西廂記), considered to be a hugely significant, if not the most monumental, piece in the classical repertoire, has eluded me, until now.

The NCPA currently plays host to Beifang Kunqu Opera Theater (北方昆曲劇院), which has put together a fine West Chamber production and has been going rounds in China in the past few years. Helmed by famed director Guo Xiaonan (郭曉男) and staged by Huang Kaifu (黃楷夫), the production is shortened for the ADD-infested modern audience, the kind of Blackberry-toting, multiple cellphone-juggling Twitter-phile who prefers book rags over actual tomes and one-liner news digests over newspaper copies. Aptly named the "Metropolitan" version (大都版), this Guo/Huang version, to be performed over the span of two days and includes 3 volumes and 12 chapters, is not exactly pocket-sized, but is still heavily condensed from an original magnum opus featuring 5 volumes and 21 chapters to be played out in three days. The compaction is different from the recital hall version (廳堂版) of the Peony Pavilion at the Imperial Granary in that the latter highlights famous chapters while the former reworks some of the chapters to re-weave the entire story line without taking away substance and performance (at least in theory, but more later).

The piece tells the story of Zhang Sheng (張生), an intelligent young man of proletarian origins, who meets and falls in love with Cui Yingying (崔鶯鶯), an elegant woman with prim lineage. They meet while he is resting at a temple on his way to attend the imperial examination. As this happens, Sun Feihu (孫飛虎), a rebel leader, surrounds the temple and demands the betrothal of Cui. Cui’s mother, under pressure, vows to marry her daughter away to anyone who could save them from the evil hands of Sun. The ever resourceful Zhang, steeped in his new-found love, sees opportunity and manages to find outside help who then, as if right on script, quashes Sun’s hopes. But Cui’s mother backpedals and, instead of giving Cui’s hand to Zhang, she simply makes Zhang Cui’s brother, reopening the prospects of a betrothal with a well-to-do family. Siblinghood, however, does not stop Cui’s chamber maid (紅娘) from stringing the two lovebirds together, as she deftly arranges their dates and secret rendezvous, thereby ensuring that the fruit of love between Zhang and Cui continues to ripen. Eventually, recognizing a path of inevitability but remaining stubbornly allergic to Zhang’s less-than-impressive lineage, the mother devises her allergy suppressor and agrees to their marriage under one condition: that Zhang would have to return triumphant from the examination. After a painful departure and an extended period of separation, Zhang finally returns as a top scholar, proves his upward mobility, and returns to find a life of happiness with Cui.

The original version of the story is invariably more complicated, in which the mother is so hostile to the peasantry class that she tries to ensconce the truth about Zhang’s examination triumph from Cui and plans ahead to marry Cui off to an aristocrat – until the truth eventually reveals itself. Wei Chunrong (魏春榮) and Wang Zhenyi (王振義), both of whom I had the privilege of listening to multiple times back in April, star as the pair of lovebirds. The performance is heavily modernized, with a production set that projects an art-deco flavor a la Frank Lloyd Wright, albeit with motifs seemingly, and loosely, based on the auspicious cloud (祥雲), a more organic and traditional Chinese elemental feature. The stage is a glass platform that lit from below by a plethora of colorful lighting, to be switched on and off based on the scene and character mood. Minimalist decorations draped from the lighting grid and sparsely anchored on stage provide subtle cues depicting seasonal and scenic changes. Between chapters, no curtain is dropped while lights are rarely dimmed enough to hide scene changes. The furniture, considered a cornerstone of the movement and the basis for character interaction in traditional Chinese opera, is not the typical fabric-wrapped kind that is abundantly featured in traditional opera fare. Instead, the chair and the table are actually somewhat a cross between Rococo and Chinoiserie revivals, subtly paying, if only accidental, homage to Thomas Chippendale and, with some imagination, Townsend-Goddard. Lighting is heavily modernized too, with spot lights and modulated coloration that not just provide illumination but awash the set with the mood of the moment. By comparison, several features of the art form, including the costume, head dressing, and the rare cues of martial arts, are decidedly more traditional. Also faithful to tradition is the lack of physical props, e.g. unlike some other revivals I've seen on DVD, this production offers no physical barrier in the critical wall scene (跳墙); nor are there painted curtains to convey scenes and background. That leaves much of the scenic description to the acting.

The actors are magnificent, with Wang bringing out the comic, if not also slightly naiveté, nature of Zhang. Wang's Zhang transitions from wandering pensiveness to streaks of thoughtful deliberation, to great effect. Wei, with her fragile porcelain face and her immaculate bodily movement, exudes a poignant character with profound intellect and a virgin’s vulnerability. Wang and Wei’s characters are meticulously built up over two evenings, culminating in a verboten scene where their relationship is consummated in a prolonged physical embrace underneath a piece of white fabric -- decorated, or metaphorically tainted, with an embroidered, bright-red peony -- that could have been a tad too suggestive and scandalous not too long ago. While the two lovebirds strike the right tone by themselves, West Chamber, in my view, is really pulled together by Hong Niang, the chamber maid character, a vocally prodigious and visually demanding creation that provides the necessary emotional, energetic, and philosophical anchor-piece to facilitate the slow-brewing love story between the two lead characters. Ni Hong (倪泓), as a Shanghai-based invitee to this northern production, handily delivers the role of the maid, with a fiendish expressiveness and a dominating stage presence. Ni's voice is pitch-perfect, with a robust coloratura projection and a convincing range of dynamics.

In my opinion, this "Metropolitan" version is just a chapter or two too short, thus leaving more to be desired. At 1.5 hours, the second evening is much shorter than the first (almost 2.5 hours without intermission). It seems to me that the ending is a little too rushed, with the all-important return scene not acted out but merely recited in a quick, unemotional epilogue. This is unfortunate, because even though the crux of the story is about the romantic, and sometimes annoying, aspects of courtship, this courtship is not going to achieve consummation in totem, at least in spirit, without Zhang’s triumphant return following a painful separation scene (長亭送別). Perhaps this is one way for Guo/Huang to downplay a de facto caste system in ancient China imbued with strict adherence to intra-caste marriage between aristocracies with traceable gotras. That said, this West Chamber is marked by excellent acting, as well as a hauntingly minimalist yet superbly effective stage modernization that showcases Kunqu, in my view, not merely as an artistic relic of the yesteryear but an art form willing and able to adapt for a rapidly modernizing aesthetic POV and social psyche.

Teatro Regio di Parma in Beijing

Teatro Regio di Parma, together with the National Centre for the Performing Arts, staged a stunning production of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto this week, during Beijing's Opera Festival. In the early afternoon before Thursday's premiere, Beijing was darkened by rapidly-collecting rainclouds before finally sloshed with heavy rain, a fitting prelude to match the opera's penultimate, or the "Apollo", scene. Another random coincidence was that Rigoletto was first premiered at La Fenice, whose opera company was in Beijing just a week ago.

The stage was designed and produced by the late Pier Luigi Samaritani, who mixed traditional forms and structures with practical solutions of modern minimalism. His Sparafucile house was an elevated stage with a meticulous, castle-like exterior which ruptured laterally at an angle to reveal the interior. This opening worked perfectly, especially during the quartet, Un dì, se ben rammentomi, when the two pairs of characters were supposed to juxtapose vocally without physically being together. The Mantua palace was minimalistic but worked effectively, with plenty of open spaces for the noblemen and the Duke's ladies to jostle around. I'm generally not a fan of modern screens, but the use of a drop-down screen to separate Sparafucile and Rigoletto in the deal scene was effective because it helped to describe the seemingly conflicting notions of the two characters' actual proximity and the darkness that infinitely separated them.

Singing the role of the Duke was Francesco Demuro, whose voice was simply too lightweight for a hall as big as the NCPA's opera house. He was visibly and audibly nervous during La donna è mobile, where his high registers seemed completely forced, dry, and uncontrolled. His lower registers were tidy enough, but for an aria so frequently heard everywhere, tidy enough was not good enough. Demuro wobbled his final B5...with the subsequent applause short and, at least as it sounded to me, almost too unnecessarily gratuitous. As a side note, Demuro was audibly looser and more relaxed in his off-stage aria during Rigoletto's Della vendetta alfin giunge l'istante! recitative -- perhaps that was when the burdensome baggage of the famous aria was finally off his shoulders.

Gilda was sung by Désirée Rancatore, whose voice was bright and impassioned. In Sì! Vendetta, tremenda vendetta!, she hit her un-scored Eb6 with apparently little effort. She actually did it twice -- but I'll explain later. So it was slightly disappointing that she chose not to hit the dominating but somewhat frivolous "diva Db6" in the quartet. The only blemish in her voice was the world's difference between her high-range singing voice and her lower-range speaking voice. When she sang a passage that hit both ranges, she sounded like two voices combined in one -- sort of like listening to Hasselbeck and Goldberg bitch-slapping each other on The View (ok, maybe this was an unfair analogy, but I ran out of ideas as I wrapped up writing this entry at 3am). Felipe Bou delivered a solid Sparafucile, with a devilish playfulness during the deal scene and a forceful assertion during the Apollo scene. The rest of the cast was solid, including Francesca Franci, who blossomed with an abundance of molasses-like sassyness in the contralto role of Maddalena, and Roberto Tagliavini, who delivered a warm-voiced Count Monterone.

But the night, without a doubt, belonged to Leo Nucci. At 67, I had little expectation, especially given that my experience with José Carreras last year, then at 61, was less than completely satisfying. But Nucci was dominant from the get-go, with a powerful voice that permeated all corners of the opera house, and with spot-on acting that brought out the complicated emotions of the title role. His Rigoletto was complex, with alternating tinges of deviousness and compassion. His voice sounded best when the lighting was mostly off, or when he hid in an unlid portion of the stage -- that was where there was no visual distraction, thereby pushing his notes after notes of deliciousness to the showcasing center. With a convexly humped spine and a weather-washed visage, Nucci was the perfect Rigoletto: Nucci was Rigoletto as much as Rigoletto was Nucci. In Cortigiani, vil razza dannata, his impassioned display of paternal love and human fragility brought the entire audience to their feet. With a prolonged ovation, Nucci had to step out of his role to thank the audience and the orchestra, and deservedly, he seemed to relish that moment. Barely two bars later, he slipped back into his character, which he must have played a million times, as he made eye contact with Gilda and responded with:

"Dio! mia Gilda!"
"Gilda, my daughter!" (my translation)

That line radiated a quality of loving sentimentalism that befitted a Thursday evening just before Father's Day weekend.

I don't say this often, but this was definitely one of my favorite opera experiences. Nucci was hands-down my favorite Rigoletto, surpassing even Wixell in the monumental '83 production with Chailly/VPO, or MacNeil in the passionate '77 live recording with Levine/Met. When Sì! Vendetta concluded Act II, the audience's reception was so rapturous that Nucci, beaming with satisfaction, called upon conductor Donato Renzetti to encore the duet (that was also where Rancatore hit her second Eb6). When his voice began to speak Verdi's language, his enduring charisma had the entire audience on a tight leash. Ultimately, it was obvious why Nucci owned both the audience and the night.

Madama Butterfly

Beijing's opera season steps into high gear with Madama Butterfly, a co-production between La Fenice di Venezia and the National Centre for the Performing Arts. This marks the first collaboration between the two groups. Based on the fruits of their efforts, there is no reason why there shouldn't be more collaborations to come.

The production, directed by Daniele Abbado, featured a minimalist set that felt like a simple tesseract projected into our three-dimensional world. Puccini's characters would then move about in the inner cube. The set's simplicity was augmented with a thoughtful, albeit at times too cerebral, interchange of lighting colors. These colors were meant to emphasize the natural colors of Nagasaki's seasons and the more iconographic shadings of the libretto's mood. The stage sported a chessboard of translucent panels illuminated from below, pulsating with varying colors as the music motioned forward: brighter when the mood was light, and darker when the mood was sappy and subdued. Similarly back-lit translucent walls reflected mood and time of day. The rest of the stage was devoid of other props, except the presence of a table and two zabutons (for kneeling) which, in my opinion, rightfully paid tribute to the sort of minimalist furniture setup in traditional Asian theater (一桌兩椅).

Butterfly was the Ukrainian soprano Oksana Dyka: her Cio Cio San, emanating an air of fragility and natural bereavement, was spot-on. Her voice, like aged Burgundy, was sultry and round. Her upper registers were brilliant and brisk, albeit also slightly asserted -- the effect was, especially in softer passages, an audible, though not persistent, loss in command of dynamics control. More impressive, by comparison, was her natural beauty and fluid body movements, which readily seduced Pinkerton. During the love duet, Bimba, Bimba, non piangere, the two characters' beautiful, intertwining voices drew the audience to the edge of their seats and, at the moment when Pinkerton waxed poetic about Cio Cio San's intoxicating eyes:

"Tutta la tua tribù e i Bonzi tutti del Giappon
non valgono il pianto di quegli occhi cari e belli."

"Your family and priests in Japan
are not worth the tears from your loving, beautiful eyes." (my translation)

triggered in me an emotional wildfire where my burning desire to jump on stage and be part of their tight embrace was only marginally suppressed by what remained of my rapidly-deteriorating self-restraint.

Pinkerton, sung by tenor Kamen Chanev, captured the character's shift from a vibrant, passionate lover to a dark, remorseful sinner. Sharpless was sung by baritone Simone Piazzola, who was comfortably solid and clear.

Daniela Innamorati, as Suzuki, had a solid stage presence that was commanding yet inoffensive. When Cio Cio San asked that all-important question in "Suzuki, Suzuki!", Suzuki's response, a soft "Si", evoked a whiff of inevitability and vulnerability that, in my opinion, perfectly encapsulated the climatic moment of the entire piece's storyline. Her Suzuki moved me in ways that many Suzukis in the past could not.

Conductor Nicola Luisotti kept the thrust of Puccini's melodic line in locomotion without caving into singers' preferred tempos, which, in the case of Madama Butterfly, were often slower and more drawn-out. During the mellow chorus, "Coro a bocca chiusa", Luisotti was respectful to the notation and spirit of the music, and led the orchestra into an idyllic, almost solipsistic sojourn. Less respectful was the audience, who managed to generate a fair amount of noise that didn't jive well with the ethereal fluidity of Puccini's passage. But as a whole, this Madama Butterfly, though not without inadequacies, was successfully executed and a well-deserved star of the opera season.

Revolutionary Poetry: 长征组歌

2009 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Accordingly, this year’s art and cultural scene in Beijing has been inundated with activities with an unmistakably revolutionary theme. One such activity is the revival of the monumental 长征组歌, a Liederkreis that poetically draws up the poignant history of the Chinese Red Army’s Long March between 1934 and 1936.

The cycle starts with Bidding Farewell (告别), a serious number portraying the scene where marchers parted with their families to fight for a greater cause. In the middle of the cycle, Traversing the Snow Mountains and Grasslands (过雪山草地) depicts the great difficulty when the marchers scaled the rugged mountains in the brutal continental winter. The cycle ends with a predictably upbeat but still stunningly rapturous finale, set at Gansu’s Huining (甘肃会宁), where the choir tutti praises Chairman Mao and the Communist Party. This struggle-to-victory story flow is understandably similar to that of Flower Girl, the DPRK revolutionary opera that I attended and wrote about last year.

In keeping with tradition, the musicians wear red army uniforms (红军服) and straw sandals during the performance of the cycle. The evening’s performance also includes recitals of a few revolutionary classics, including Our Soldiers (咱当兵的人; video) and Motherland (祖国慈祥的母亲; video).

As someone who does not regularly tune into CCTV's entertainment programming that caters to the patriotic crowd, I must confess I am not at all familiar with revolutionary music -- the genre. I am attracted to and intrigued by last night’s performance not least because the performance is supposedly a defining moment in this year's gargantuan slate of anniversary activities, but because I like to wean on and study more about this patriotic culture that grows beyond what is parochially required of all citizens in China. After all, the tickets are not cheap; and no one (at least for people like me) is forced to attend the concert. Still, judging by the way the audience connects with the music and its stars, it is obvious to me that: (1) many audience members are intimately familiar with the music's genre and can readily recite most of the lyrics by memory; and (2) some of these stars, including Liu Bin (刘斌; bio, in Chinese) and Geng Lianfeng (耿莲凤; bio, in Chinese), are genuine heavyweights in the genre of revolutionary music, much like Pavarotti and Sutherland in opera. They draw a rabid fan following – as evidenced by fans’ enthusiastic reception upon their entrance on stage. They issue their own CDs (revolutionary music usually has its separate section at CD shops all over Beijing), run their music troupes, write new music (咱当兵的人, which was used by President Jiang Zemin to inspect the line during 1999’s military parade, was written by Liu Bin) and star regularly in CCTV’s plethora of entertainment programming. This culture is something that I am only recently introduced to; in fact, I am eager to find out if this culture exists all across China, or only in the unabashedly patriotic fishbowl of Beijing.

I was grateful to find one friend willing to attend this amazing performance with me. Our attendance was quite improbable: considering that most of these sing-along attendees -- some in their uniforms -- were in their 50s or 60s, we were conspicuous by virtue of our relatively young age. In the end however, we, or at least I, realized that well-written lyrics and melodic tunes find no bounds in affecting the audience and bringing the audience back for a brief ride back to history’s past.

Dudamel conducts Bernstein and Mahler in Beijing

This past Friday evening, my friend and I attended a concert by Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, conducted by the 27-year-old phenomenon, Gustavo Dudamel.

Simón Bolívar and Dudamel performed two pieces: Bernstein's West Side Story Symphonic Dances and, after intermission, Mahler's First. The rendition of Bernstein's West Side Story was, for me to put it mildly, less than enthusiastic. The outcome was stiff and uninspiring, and lacked the interplay between jubilance and mellowness, as well as the mischievous energy that was called upon by Bernstein. The performance was sourly disappointing, not least because I was eagerly looking forward to this performance after having read and heard so much about Dudamel, who was to become L.A. Phil's youngest-ever music director starting next (2009-10) season, and the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, one of more than 200 youth orchestras in Venezuela funded by the Venezuelan government with the aim of uplifting poor neighborhoods and children who live in them through structured music education. Simón Bolívar, considered the apex of this wildly successful art and social experiment, has won accolades and praises not just for its narrative as a pioneering, broad-reaching social program but also for its symphonic prowess and artistic balance. Therefore, when we heard something that was more like my high school band than one with multiple DG recordings, at least I was so crestfallen that, before the Bernstein was half completed, my mind was drifting away, not into Manhattan's west side as Dudamel probably had hoped, but to endless permutations of how to salvage this Friday evening if we were to skip after intermission.

After intermission, we went back nevertheless, with her Proustian reminder that, even if we had tried, we couldn't have found a better place to be on a brutally cold Friday night in Beijing than in the embrace of the National Centre for Performing Arts. And boy, we were glad we didn't bail! When the first sets of A chords came out, we knew right away that our concerns were unnecessary - they came out with plenty of force and confidence, projecting one-part of controlled balance and one-part of sensual opulence. The Gesellen passages were superbly rendered with meticulousness -- evoking, rightfully so, memories of listening to the Wayfarer Lieder with Kubelik and Fischer-Dieskau, on which part of the first movement is based. The galore continued with a majestic entrance to the second movement, intermingled with a velvety, triple-time mid-passage. The third movement was spacious but not in any way dragging. The voicing of the Frère Jacques passage was smooth and gleeful, with a perfect relay of windwinds meandering through Mahler's handcrafted dazzle. By the fourth movement, I was wondering how much, during the Bernstein, I had missed under the cloak of my suspicion and unwarranted anxiety. The fourth movement was perhaps the high point of the evening, with monstrous horns, plush strings, and a percussion section that made me feel inadequate.

Without a doubt, Dudamel's baton managed to control all of that artistry with precision, raising Simón Bolívar's spirit and energy as he saw fit. And mind you, Simón Bolívar was not an easy baby to control: it had about 150 musicians for the Mahler and over 200 for the Bernstein. By the time the Mahler was marching towards its grand finale, Dudamel was at his best, unleashing a galloping orchestral splendor filled with dramatic outbursts, ending the evening with a feeling of finality and authority. I have always been a huge fan of Mahler, but always in a subdued, measured kind of way. But the way I reacted to Dudamel's Mahler was alien to me -- it was warm, emotional, and fulfilling. Toasting to that, this Mahler by Simón Bolívar and Dudamel was as good as any Mahler's First I have heard.

A follow-up to a night at the opera

Using my Nokia 6280, I managed to take a couple of photos inside the opera house. Of course, the photo quality was mediocre but my phone camera was all that I had at the time. The first photo was taken during the final curtain call after nearly three hours of singing, and the second photo was taken when the percussionist was packing up her snare drum. As far as I can tell, she could rip a mean snare:

A different kind of opera

Last weekend I attended a production of "Flower Girl”, an opera staged at the National Theatre by a North Korean opera troupe.

"Flower Girl" focuses on the plight of a Korean family whose fortunes were ravaged by the selfish behavior of a landowner and his family, saved only at the end by the glory of the revolution (i.e. the Marxist-Lenin communist revolution). Without a doubt, "Flower Girl" was designed to be a partisan, propagandist surrogate whose message was simple and easy to understand. By the time the opera ended, the only question left unanswered, as it seems to me, was how soon (or not!) the supposedly inspired audience would arm themselves and join the revolution.

According to the program notes, the opera was commissioned by and written in the 30s by Kim Il-Sung, the founding father of the DPRK and father of North Korea's current leader, Kim Jong-Il. The Chinese public got their first taste of the opera through a film version of the opera, which was briefly released in the mainland in the early 70s and was well received. Since then, the opera has made various rounds in the mainland, playing mainly for small, strategically selected crowds (i.e. the PLA, young communist brigades etc.). It seems to me that while the opera has gained Chinese fans over the years, but because it has never been widely staged, it has never gained widespread prominence in the country's psyche. Over the years, the opera has been reedited by and for its chief patron, the Kim family, probably to perfect its underlying proletarian and revolutionary messages. To me, such messages were unmistakable: the landowners are(were) evil, Jesus Christ offers(-ed) no helping hand, and the proletarian revolution is(was) every Korean's ultimate salvation. The surtitles would punch out verses upon verses that sing the virtues of proletarian values, all the while ripping apart property rights and capitalistic misadventures. I felt like a cliff-side rock, looking helplessly as rapturous waves of such messages soldiered towards me in an endless repetition, finally engulfing and obliterating me, as if obliging me to accept its imminent and inevitable victory.

Politics aside, the opera was, strictly speaking, not an opera, because the main singers were given microphones to sing with. Unusual in an opera, a non-acting choir located on both sides of the orchestra sang not only the chorus, but more significantly the part of the heavenly voice seeking to explain everything to the audience -- for example, who to blame for all the poor people's plight (the landowner) and who to get credit for saving the poor (the revolution). Without a sliver of a doubt, Kim Il-Sung was to live vicariously and eternally through the united voice of the choir --an arrangement that, in itself, was a fitting, if not accidental, metaphor. Operatically, it was somewhat difficult to pinpoint exactly where "Flower Girl" would fit. The music was comprised of a chain of short tunes, each of which was tonally structured like a romantic aria, but each also woven with more sincere philosophical discourse and less floral sentimentality. "Flower Girl" is, thus, as it seems to me, Wagnerian in its content but romantic in its delivery. The singing was superb, despite the horrifying presence of the microphone. The production direction was amply satisfying, especially a prison scene whereby prisoners, understood to be locked down by the autocratic class, thumped through the prison ground as if they were laboring mindlessly in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. In the end, I was convinced that the mezzo soprano (the protagonist) and probably a few others could have sung their entire roles without the help of any electronics. Another mezzo soprano (the protagonist's mother) also sang superbly, and I found it somewhat tragic that her role was small and limiting.

The highlight of the evening was at the end, when I made my way to the orchestral pit and shook hands with a couple of musicians. I could hardly speak Korean (and I would assume they could hardly understand a word of Chinese --though I could be wrong), but I found no such need to communicate verbally. We exchanged smiles in a way that spoke a thousand words: theirs, being appreciative of a keen audience and the sincerity of those who chose to stay behind to greet and thank the musicians; and ours, being thankful for a lovely spring evening imbued with fine music, talented singing and, most importantly, the North Korean's rare but priceless presence. For different reasons, the night was special to each involved. I couldn't help but felt the urge to summarize the evening with a tinge of romantic sentimentality: that while the exchange of human warmth was a small gesture between a few men (and women), it was a giant gesture for all of mankind, in an act that verily shows how humanity by way of musical and facial proxy can transcend language, politics, ideology. No word needed spoken, for music and facial gestures cultivated the seeds of understanding and mutual admiration. That moment was, to me, the singularly most heartwarming and unique experience I have ever had in an opera house.

Le roi d'Ys

Édouard Lalo is well known for his string compositions, for a good reason: he was an accomplished violin and viola player himself. His Spanish Symphony, a violin concerto, is considered to be an important rite of passage for many aspiring violinists.

His opera compositions, however, are less well known. Le Roi d'Ys, considered to be Lalos' most well-scored and sophisticated opera, is rarely staged. (The Met, for example, staged Le Roi six times in its 120+ years history --and these six were performed in a single season: 1921-1922.) This rarity was the primary reason why I was excited to learn that Le Roi would be staged this week at the National Theatre in Beijing, in a production co-produced by the National Theatre and the Theatre du Capitole de Toulouse.

Last night I went to the second of four Le Roi performances this weekend. Honestly, I don't have much exposure to Lalo's work prior to last night, and I was somewhat surprised by the Wagnerian nature of the composition. By the second Act, I was convinced why Lalo's work remains in the back bin of any company's repertoire: one simply can't market a Wagnerian feature under the banner of a French composer. The two concepts just don't mix...selling Le Roi, as it seems to me, is like selling existential philosophy at a burlesque factory. I am not trying deliberately to make a direct and parallel analogy here: my point, however, is that no easy way exists to fuse the two perceptibly differing concepts into one coherent, marketable product.

But last night's production was as close to achieving something monstrous as I could possibly imagine. Even so, the production was not devoid of misses: the singing, by most standards, was lackluster. The tenor singing the role of Mylio was simply not up for the challenge. His voice was weak and unable to project adequately to all corners of the hall (I sat in a perfectly located orchestra center seat but felt that his delivery was timid, particularly towards the end when Lalo obviously expected Mylio to be brazen and bold). Rozenn, a soprano role, delivered technically but was incapable of establishing any emotional connection with the audience (perhaps she was merely effectuating the role, which was supposed to be simple but oblivious to most of what went on?). It was due to the miscast of both Mylio and Rozenn that I found Margared, a mezzo-soprano role, to be sumptuously fulfilling, perhaps simply by comparison. The villainous role was hardly bel canto in nature (after all, Le Roi is, at least to me, Wagnerian), but the singer was able to deliver a top quality voice that not only danced powerfully with the orchestral score, but invited the audience (or just me?) to feel her villainous rage.

But Margared alone was not enough to save the day. What made Le Roi work, or rather, this Le Roi work was the production stage. The set includes a beautifully painted, two-story stage with plenty of ornamental details and fabulous engravings. The opera also calls for a dramatic flooding scene in the final scene. Common sense would dictate that no production would actually flood the stage with real water, but would only metaphorically do so through stage effects (e.g. blue lighting, and/or dancing ribbons) to falsify an imminent tidal surge. But no, the production designer actually flooded the stage, not merely with a few metaphoric buckets but with gallons upon gallons of fresh water gushing from the top of the two-story stage down a central stair piece and onto the stage floor! (The water was, as it seemed to me, then captured by slits across the stage.) It was as magnificent as real elephants in Aida or marching horses in Khovanshchina, except, of course, that this water design was so much more difficult to pull off not merely because of the logistic nightmare of recapturing the water but also of the #1 issue in any stage design: safety.

According to the production notes, the stage seems to be conceptualized and managed by folks at the National Theatre. If anything, this Le Roi set proves that Chinese production designers are world class, and that the Theatre's mechanics can deliver such a technical marvel, so seemingly unfathomable anywhere else, that the production was saved from mediocrity.

José Carreras recital

I almost missed out on a great opportunity to listen to Carreras because by the time I learned about the recital earlier this week, it was already sold out. If I hadn't exhausted all my contacts and traded some favors, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to catch one of the finest living opera singers in my lifetime.

The concert: while Carreras has lost some of his range (the highest note he hit all night, if my pitch hasn't failed me, was a Ab5 --and that was delivered with visible strain), he more than made up with an impassioned, controlled delivery. His intense concentration was amply projected through his voice and, to an even greater extent, his facial emotions. Notwithstanding a few strained high notes, Carreras' voice oozed with a mature, dutiful yet non-threatening perfection. The dramatic highlight of the evening was a superbly crafted encore piece --Verdi's Libiamo ne' lieti calici, together with soprano Po-ching Ip (no, I don't believe Carreras hit the last Bb...but who cares...the capacity audience, including I, went absolutely berserk after a prolonged, rousing third-last note, the G5). In an earlier encore (he did a total of three encores), Carreras first confounded the audience by revealing what seemed to be a hastily scribbled cheat sheet, and then turned the house into a pandemonium when he began singing to the tune of "在那遙遠的地方", in accented (but arguably well spelled-out?) Mandarin Chinese. While Carreras was taking breaks on backstage between his 10 arias of the evening, Ip (who was a classmate of mine at music school in HK, over 10 years ago) filled in with memorable performances, including Puccini's O mio babbino caro and, as an encore, Gounod's Je veux vivre dans ce reve.

To end, a little about the performance venue: it was held at the white-themed Concert Hall at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (or The Egg, as it is affectionately known). Similar to the opera house (which I visited two weeks ago when it first opened), the concert hall's interior is subtly tasteful and, thank goodness, without the kind of excessive exuberance that seems to define the modern Chinese taste. My only complaint: the existence of pieces of glass-like material separating the grid lights from the ambiance. When these grid lights hit the side of this glass-like material, a magnified refraction is casted on the side of the concert hall. Because the grid is suspended through wires from the ceiling, it could move, if ever so slightly, enough to cause the magnified refraction to move, in a musically miscued and visually annoying manner.

My Pavarotti

For the past few weeks, we have been hearing about Pavarotti undergoing further treatment for his pancreatic cancer. The news has been cautiously optimistic, until yesterday when Pavarotti’s condition was reported to have worsened. Today we finally heard the news that Pavarotti has left us. I am sure that in the next few weeks we shall be hearing a lot about Pavarotti, the hymns eulogizing the passing of the great tenor, his flamboyant style, and his no-nonsense, anti-establishment approach to widen the opera fan base.

He was not as politically savvy as Domingo. Nor was he as sexually appealing and attractive as Bocelli. He was the raw, unrefined lion on stage, and the relentless businessman off stage. If everything written about him was true, then he was at least as shrewd and ruthless as Howard Breslin would describe him to be. If his public behavior was any guidance as to who he really was, then he must savor his moments as opera’s royal paladin, as evidenced by his frequent, last-minute cancellations of public appearances in the twilight of his career. He was the womanizer who would dump his wife of 35 years to hook up with his 26-year-old secretary.

But there is no question that Pavarotti was a talented tenor. In my opinion, he was possibly the most naturally talented tenor in the 20^th century. Beniamino Gigli and Giuseppe Di Stefano, two of the best tenors of our time, often looked strained and tired when trying to sustain high notes. Domingo, perhaps the modern-day tenor most beloved by opera aficionados, is a great interpreter of opera composer’s works and a great master of tonal quality, but always sounds as though he couldn’t reach a level of vocal projections that he would want, especially between A5 and C6. Without implying to put down any other tenors, Pavarotti seems to have a natural ability to punch high notes with not only rhythmic precision but also superior tonal quality. I am not merely talking about the nine C6s that Pavarotti famously belted out with ease in “Ah! Mes amis,” in Donizetti’s “La Fille du Regiment” at the Met in 1972. I am also talking about how he, in his early years, handled Verdi’s requirement of a Bb5 in pianissimo in “Celeste Aida” in Verdi’s “Aida”. To be sure, Pavarotti wasn’t Franco Corelli, who arguably was the best recorded Radames ever, but Pavarotti never had as nimble a voice as Corelli’s, which made rendering of the pianissimo a lot more manageable. I’m sure when I go back to Pavarotti’s earlier recordings, I would rediscover the beauty of Pavarotti’s voice – a bold but agile voice – like a Ferrari creaming a tight corner or Michael Jordan swooshing a turnaround jumper – effortless to the regular eyes, but magical to those who practice such, day in, day out.

In terms of singing, Pavarotti’s public legacy will be linked to his high notes and his handling of the passaggios. In my opinion, however, his flamboyant and raw style made him the ultimate, purest interpreter of canzone napoletana/italiane: the Marechiares, the O Sole Mios, the Torna a Surrientos of the world, providing a standard upon which all future tenors of the napoletana genre shall be judged. He will, in my mind, forever be linked with the genre, and the genre will, in my mind, always be linked with Pavarotti.
It is incredibly sad to see him go. Had he entered the world in the early 19^th century, he would have left us with nothing tangible except a mythical legacy. But he left us with an incredible amount of recorded music that we and future generations will be able to enjoy. Pavarotti the man has left, but Pavarotti the voice will live and grace us forever.

Obituaries: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The AP (via Yahoo! News).

La Bohème

La Bohème is undoubtedly one of my favorite operas. Coincidentally, there are two pieces written about it today: by Tim Page in the Washington Post, and by Mike Greenberg at Express-News. Greenberg’s article was a fairly standard review of the San Antonio Opera at the Lila Cockrell Theatre. While it is mundane and devoid of the flowering descriptions that usually grace a classical music review, it does serve a good, descriptive purpose:

The traditional sets, built for New Orleans Opera, worked well and looked pretty good, though they fell short of the current state of the art. Tim Francis' lighting design was fairly basic. The off-the-rack costumes had that off-the-rack look.

Page’s writing, on the other hand, is nothing but mundane. As he writes a preview of Kennedy Center’s upcoming season, he trumphets the social and romantic values of what may be Puccini’s most famous work:

I wonder if there is another opera that so convincingly bewails the horrors of poverty while making most of the resultant hardships seem so romantic. Cold weather permeates "La Bohème," and yet the impression we take away with us is inevitably that of a suffusion of warmth.

I sincerely hope that when The Egg opens, there will be more opera performances here in Beijing. In the meantime, I will indulge myself in DVDs, and in reviews of performances around the world.