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OPERA REVIEW
"Peony Pavilion" Two Operas At Once
March 5, 1999
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By Lindy Li Mark
The 16th century Chinese music drama, Peony Pavilion (c. 1598) made
its great leap forward into the 20th century last May in Vienna, and
played its American premiere in Berkeley last weekend. Visually, acoustically, and poetically it is a riveting work, whether you
liked it or not in this form. Although my assignment here is to review the music, it is hard to separate that from what is happening on stage, on the
video screen, in the surtitles, or trans-national music in general.
Director Peter Sellars has time-warped an ancient love story into the
present, mixing 18th century Kunqu music with modern spoken drama and
avant-garde bel canto opera simultaneously on stage. The result is
basically two operas.
In Act I, except for some mood-setting synthesized sounds to accompany
the English spoken soliloquies in the opening, the musical excerpts
and dialog from the Kunqu version are done according to 18th century
performance practice. The Chinese prima donna Hua Wenyi sings and
dances four highly melismatic, ornamented melodies while shaping them
in the air with deft hand movements. These languid songs of romantic
yearning and unrequited despair happen to be in an hemitonic pentatonic
mode. (However, contrary to stereotyped notions, not all Kunqu
[or Chinese] music is pentatonic).
Composer/arranger Tan Dun has admirably restored the instrumental
accompaniment to its pristine tradition, that of a 5 to 6-piece
ensemble including the obligatory transverse flute, the optional pipa (pear-shaped lute) and/or erhu (two-stringed viol), all playing in unison with the voice, while the flat drum and clapper gently punctuate the meter. There is no distracting harmony or polyphony, only occasional heterophony. I call this small ensemble style "pristine" because
some contemporary arrangers in China have a penchant to clutter the
instrumental parts with Western style bass lines and triadic harmony
to "modernize" and "enrich" Kunqu. Such adulterated orchestration
tends to deflect audience attention from the complex and nuanced
poetry. It may sound modern to the audience in China, but is decidedly
maudlin to anyone familiar with Western music. In this performance
the poetic libretto is sung in Chinese and elegantly rendered by Cyril Birch into Shakespearanesque free verse (projected in the surtitles.)
It is truly regrettable that Madame Hua got to sing only four of
the shorter arias frequently performed by amateur thespians. There are
so many exquisite arias in her repertoire that would better show her
artistry. In terms of Chinese aesthetics, Hua Wenyi is noted for the
high overtones which give her vocal timbre a bright quality known as
"crisp" in Chinese. I detected a slight eroding of this brightness
in her lower register, a sign of ageing. Her costume, a golden beige
pantsuit of the most unflattering color and cut for middle-aged
figures, seems to be off the racks for up-scale ladies at Nieman-Marcus. Meanwhile her slim modern counterpart, Loren Tom, wanders
around the stage like a model for Calvin Klein jeans. Enough said.
All hell breaks loose in Act II. Here Peony Pavilion becomes
a contemporary opera composed for tenor, soprano in bel canto style,
the pear-shaped lute pipa, rock rhythm section, synthesizer,
and an assortment of ethnic instruments, including Tan Dun's trade mark, the amplification of water being dripped and stirred in a large glass bowl. The virtuoso performers are soprano Ying Huang, the pipa soloist/accompanist, and tenor Lin Qiang Xu. Huang who took Vienna by storm with her Cio-Cio San, has a voice stunning in range and color. She navigates the swooping lines and wide intervals with grace. She can act too, singing full-throated while
lying on her back making love. Min Xiao-Fen's modernistic pipa
playing easily stands on its own. She supports a sung melody without
being overpowering, but comes to the fore when she has a solo passage.
Tenor Lin Qiang Xu used some guttural techniques from Chinese opera
for special effects such as the ghost king. His lyrical sections are
smoothly sung but cracking a bit on a high note in the love song to the
ghost of his beloved. In pre-dress rehearsal he sang this passage in
falsetto with a very nice transition. He sang without falsetto in dress
rehearsal and cracked; so why he, or Peter Sellars did not change it back is
anyone's guess. Some of the special effects, such as his glottalized yodel from Chinese folk songs just did not fit the ambiance of a midnight tryst with a beautiful ghost.
Although Tan Dun's composition is avant-garde, he in fact adheres to
some very basic Chinese musical principles, mostly to good effect.
For example the electronically amplified rhythm section is loud and
thuddy (some sections in 5/4 time); Chinese opera also has raucous
percussion interludes with gongs, cymbals, clappers, and an assortment
of drums. His music for the entire second act is dominated by soaring melodic lines accompanied by the pipa in unison; again with occasional heterophony. In the trance dance of the shaman-ess, the Korean piri (double reed belled oboe) doubles the gliding vocal contour exactly. Again, there is no harmony, no polyphony, not even a dissonance. What with keeping
track of three pairs of lovers on stage (respectively dancing, singing and acting the roles of just two characters), video images in monitors
mounted overhead, embedded in plexiglass screens, and the surtitle texts,
no more musical complications are needed.
In terms of melodic tonality, Tan Dun alternates between the
pentatonic mode in the romantic arias and heptatonic mode...Dorian, I
think...in the darker underworld scenes. Some of the melodic lines
are really very simple, but very expressive. For example, the
electronically pre-recorded vocal interlude consists simply of
dovetailed intervals of rising fifths and descending fourths
(g-d-c-g/f-(e)-c-(d)-c-g). This haunting chant-like theme, repeated
whenever there is a change of scene, gives a sense of unity, and draws
attention away from the pushing and shoving happening on the stage. It is
also simple enough for anyone in the audience to go away humming.
Similarly, the love song to the ghost uses a straight-forward rising
pentatonic row. What is noticeably uncharacteristic of Chinese music
in this opera is the predominance of rising melodic lines.
All in all, this revisionist Peony Pavilion,a reference to a mystical
garden where a young woman in antiquity first dreamt of an ideal
lover, is a highly innovative and creative fusion of dramatic and
musical genres. I think the music is rather more successful than the
drama.
1. Kunqu, meaning "song of Kun", is named after the town of Kunshan, located between Shanghai and Suzhou. It was here that a musician Wei Liangfu (fl. 1522-1567) first codified the style as we know it today. 2. Contrary to Tan Dun's statement in the program notes about traditional Chinese music not being written, Kunqu is among the most written music there is. 4466 melodies in Chinese notation and with texts are preserved in an imperial compendium first printed in 1742-46. Several arias from the Peony Pavilion are found in this compendium. 3. The transverse flute used in Kunqu is made of bamboo. Between the six fingering holes and blow hole, there is another one covered by a thin membrane from the inner bore of a type of reed. The vibration from this membrane gives a bright coloration to the timbre. This timbre blends with the singing voice and supports it by producing sympathetic vibrations. A singer who has had to sing accompanied by a dull flute with a too-tight membrane knows the strain on the voice. 4. Again, in keeping with Chinese tradition, the ensemble in this performance was seated on stage to the right. A Chinese ensemble has no conductor, so every player has to be able to see the actors to know when to come in.
(Lindy Li Mark, Ph.D., is professor of anthropology and department chair at California State University, Hayward. She also studied ethnomusicology for her M.A. degree and learned traditional Kunqu from her parents) ©1999 Lindy Li Mark, all rights reserved |
Shi Jiehua (left)