plum-blossom liebestod

One of the big events on the Cal Performances schedule came early on in the season: the Chinese opera extravaganza The Peony Pavilion by Tang Xianzu, which even in a greatly reduced version ran over three days, three hours each day. I missed the Tan Dun/Peter Sellers version that Cal Performances presented several years ago, to which I heard wildly varying reactions that made me wish I had gone (something always slips through; trying to keep up is a constant frustration). This version was closer to the traditional style, complete with amazing acrobatics and eye-popping costumes, though it was adapted to modern tastes in certain ways; for instance, in a trend that seems to be universal in the opera world, the young lovers were played by attractive people who were actually young instead of long-practiced middle-aged masters of the craft, though this shouldn't be taken to mean that there was any compromise in performance quality. Shen Fengying was particularly exquisite and moving as the young woman who dies of longing for the young scholar (played by the excellent Yu Jiuling) who invaded her dreams and later resurrects her when her portrait fills him with reciprocal love.

I was sitting very close, as is my preference, and during the intermissions I could look at the instruments and music in the pit. There were some western string instruments but mostly Chinese ones each of which seemed to have a different method of notation. It wasn't until the third day that I noticed any amplification, so I don't know if that was the only day it was used (there was the occasional sign of vocal fatigue by then, which isn't too surprising given the long and tiring roles) or if it had been used all along and I hadn't noticed. If the latter, everyone who uses amplification should immediately start using the Chinese method, since for once it was not jarring and alienating (one of the problems I had with the recent Broadway Sweeney Todd is that I was seated almost directly under a speaker and the sound was coming from there instead of the stage, as if they were lip-synching; this sort of crude amplification is why I don't go to that many non-classical musical events anymore).

Chinese or Chinese-American viewers filled the audience; it's not necessarily true that membership in an ethnic group gives you some special connection with an old work from that tradition (would a contemporary English couple, say a businessman and a housewife, have some special understanding of Shakespeare, who was roughly contemporary with Tang Xianzu?) but ethnic pride can sure fill houses. I was surprised that there was laughter at the scene in which the ghost of Du Liniang (the young woman) first appears to Liu Mengmei (the young scholar). Ghosts appear extravagant and absurd to contemporary audiences unless custom has deadened their impact (as in Hamlet), but I would think this story doesn't have much poignance or resonance unless you take the ghost seriously. And that scene wasn't really played for comedy, though there was plenty of comedy in the show, particularly at the end, when it's not enough for the lovers to be united -- they must have the family approval.

But by and large this Chinese opera had a lot in common with baroque opera and theater, including the mixture of comedy in the lower classes and tragedy in the upper, set piece arias rather than ensembles, buskined actors, a studly young hero with a girly high voice (though as an exception to my point making him a young scholar seemed very traditionally Chinese), comic pedants and saucy older women, spectacular scenes in the underworld, and above all the dream of a love deeper than death, stronger than distance, wider than this world.