The National Palace Museum under Chou Kung-shin (周功鑫) has sought to extend itself in a variety of new directions. Its New Melody series launched in July 2009 saw the linking of visual arts with performance arts, and has proved remarkably successful. With the announcement earlier this week that a completely new opera will be commissioned for the series, the museum is taking this idea a step further.
The opera, titled Kangxi Emperor and Louis-Dieudonne (康熙大帝與太陽王路易十 四), the production of which has been entrusted to Contemporary Legend Theatre (當代傳奇劇場), will be performed in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name that will run from Oct. 3 until Jan. 1 next year.
At a press conference held to announce this new and innovative collaboration, Chou said that the New Melody series’ linking of visual and performance arts had been a huge success.
Photo Courtesy of Contemporary Legend Theatre
“Since I took up my position in 2008, I have aimed to make the National Palace Museum a place with which everyone is familiar,” she said. “Of course, there has been criticism, with people saying it has become like a vegetable market or department store. If people come in any numbers, of course there is going to be noise. But if people come, they will learn, and if they come often, their appreciation of art will increase, and this will change their lives. With the New Melody series, what we wanted to do is provide a multifaceted introduction to art, one in which these works would leave a lasting impression. It is based on our experience of [the series] that we have taken on this new challenge, for we believe that the combination of visual and performance arts is a powerful one.”
The opera will be performed in the plaza outside the National Palace Museum on Oct. 15 and Oct. 16. Three additional performances will be held at the Miaoli Arena (苗栗小巨蛋) from Oct. 21 to Oct. 23.
Although the production is still a work in progress, the casting has begun. Contemporary Legend founder Wu Hsing-kuo (吳興國) will play the role of the Kangxi Emperor (康熙), while the court of Louis XIV will include tenor Jean Francois Novelli (as Louis), soprano Camille Poul and baritone Pierrick Boisseau. The libretto will be written by novelist Chang Ta-chun (張大春), who collaborated with Contemporary Legend on its pop-opera fusion trilogy 108 Heroes (水滸108), and the costumes will be created by Oscar-winning designer Tim Yip (葉錦添), who made the costumes for Ang Lee’s (李安) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍). The set and lighting design will be by Lin Keh-hua (林克華), who has been associated with many of Taiwan’s most successful international theatrical projects, most notably the sets for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集). Conductor Paul Chiang (江靖波), the founder of Philharmonia Moments Musicaux (樂興之時管弦樂團), will be entrusted with managing the difficult combination of baroque music and kun opera (崑曲).
Photo Courtesy of Contemporary Legend Theatre
The essential point of both the exhibition and the opera is to show the cultural heights achieved under two powerful rulers who held sway over their respective domains at roughly the same time, and also to highlight the interaction that took place between the European and Chinese cultures during that period, often through the medium of Jesuit missionaries. Wu announced an ambitious design that employ tiered outdoor stage so that life at the early Qing Dynasty court could be juxtaposed with the different but equally sumptuous court of Louis XIV.
This is not the first time that high culture musical fusions between Taiwan and France have been attempted. This kind of project can be traced back to Han Tang Yuefu’s (漢唐樂府) Le Jardin des Delices (梨園幽夢) in 1999, if not earlier, and there have been many attempts at various forms of fusion since then. With a cast of 45, and an orchestra of 45 musicians from very different traditions, the talent and ambition behind this project augurs a memorable show that encapsulates the National Palace Museum’s broad new ambitions.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would