In this week's issue, there is a unique review of Peter Sellars' production of the Peony Pavilion, unique because it may be the only one written by someone with authority in the matter of Kunqu opera in particular and of Chinese music in general.

The trouble with most opera reviews in these times is that they focus on production and vocal aspects, limiting to a minimum, discussion of the music and its performance other than in the singing. Easy then for people to forget that opera is first of all a musical creation and experience. That in turn may strengthen the growing impression that opera as we know it has no creative future.

An attempt to devise a fusion between a traditional kind of Asian musical theater to which we apply the term "opera" and Western opera, theater, technology and much else Peony Pavilion is Peter Sellars' latest essay at "rescuing" this creative future. So much activity onstage competes for the attention that the dramatic experience is pretty much done in and the subject becomes theater and modern production technology.

Since many readers of San Francisco Classical have not had access to the publicity, descriptions and reviews in the Bay Area press or to the production itself in Berkeley last weekend, a brief synopsis of the 16th century love story and its modern transmogrification may be a helpful complement to Ms Li Mark's excellent analysis and commentary.

The story tells of two lovers who have met only in their dreams, the 16 year-old Du Linang , frustrated in the unfulfillable sublimation, starving herself to death. That much is greatly amplified in the 60-minute first act. The second act is concerned with the reuniting of the lovers. The male, Liu Mengmei, discovers Du Liniang in a dream and then in an actual portrait. Her ghost comes to him, and after exchanging marriage vows, he learns from her that she is a ghost and that he must exhume her body and bring her back to life. Which he does, in about 90 minutes. (The original takes 18 hours).

Sellars' approach is to work two, and in the second act, three pairs of performers at once, at first in alternation and eventually simultaneously. In Act II, pairs of dancers, singers and actors, each represent the two lovers at the same time. Add to this, the presence of changing images on the banks of television monitors onstage and out in the hall, and moving about of the scenic devices, and production per se does take over. In a failure of the simplest technology used however, the Supertitles providing the highly valued literary substance in Cyril Birch's translation, were illegible for extended scenes because of the amount of light spill from the stage. Nor was the ineffectively choreographed dancing more than a distracting element.

However, to whatever extent Peony Pavilion aspires to opera in some form, ultimately, the music's the thing. For that discussion, we now turn the floor over to Ms Li Mark in today's lead review.