The Plum Blossom Fan (桃花扇) is recognized as one of the two greatest Chinese operatic love stories dramatized during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Unlike The Pavilion of Eternal Youth (長生殿), with which it shares top honors, it is rarely performed on stage, though the libretto is widely read and appreciated for its poetic excellence. This year, the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts (國立臺灣戲曲學院) revived the opera with a completely new score written for symphony orchestra, which premieres at the National Theater in Taipei tonight.
With over 44 acts with over 30 major characters, the original opera by Kong Shangren (孔尚任) is a love story set against political upheaval and the fall of a dynasty.
Tseng Yong-yi (曾永義), a professor of literature at National Taiwan University, condensed the story to a two-and-a-half hour format, cutting out many of the sub-plots and focusing on the central love story, while retaining something of the social and political backdrop, which are central to the original work’s appeal.
Composer Yu Chang-fa (游昌發) wrote a new score for the opera to be performed by the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra (台北愛樂管弦樂團).
The aim of this collaboration between librettist and composer is to create a “modern Chinese musical.” Tseng said that in the past, Chinese musicals had often used Western music in a manner that disregarded the sound and rhythms of Chinese speech. “The sounds of the words and the music must fit together if we are to create something that is not overshadowed by the conventions of the Western musical,” he said.
Yu, a Western-trained musician with an interest in traditional Chinese opera dating back 30 years, said that he has long nurtured an ambition to create orchestral music that is a logical extension of Beijing opera. “My aim is not to lead a revolution in Beijing opera. All I want to do is take it one step further ... In the same way that Beijing opera was an extension of the kun (崑) style. ... I want to give it a new potential. Though it might be a single step, it is a step that is very difficult to take,” he said.
Speaking at a press conference earlier this month, Yu said he was struggling to integrate the complex physical movements of Beijing opera with an orchestral score. “The orchestra does not have the same kind of rapport with the actors that is possible with a traditional percussion and string ensemble,” he said. “The performers have had to adapt to a totally new musical environment.”
This sort of experimentation is relatively new and takes many different forms. Even as the Taipei Philharmonic is preparing to take the stage with Yu’s score, the National Chinese Orchestra (NCO, 台灣國家國樂團) is also in intensive rehearsals for Death and Love of My Mother — The Reminiscence of the Diva Daughter (凍水牡丹 ─ 廖瓊枝與臺灣國家國樂團), in which it provides orchestral music to gezai opera (歌仔戲) in a semi-staged production at the National Concert Hall on Sunday.
“My music for this production incorporates the musical language of many kinds of regional opera into a complete orchestral score,” Yu said, distinguishing it from other projects that he described as simply an orchestral arrangement of established Beijing opera melodies. “This is not about any inadequacies in traditional opera. It is simply that culture lives by moving forward. We can cherish the past, but we also need to add to it.”
The Plum Blossom Fan in its own way was a groundbreaking work for its time, incorporating intricately researched details about the political background against which the central love story between a high-ranking official and a courtesan is played out. It is this broad canvas of political rivalry, corruption and betrayal that has made this opera so popular as a work of literature. Whether this new collaboration will revive its fortunes in the theater remains to be seen.
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