sc4-962-3d
Dream of the Red Chamber | reviewed by Lissa Tyler Renaud | Scene4 Magazine October 2016  www.scene4.com

Lissa Tyler Renaud

Their brand new production, Dream of the Red Chamber, is the perfect project for San Francisco Opera. First of all, the Bay Area tends to be culturally adventurous, so it has a good chance of supporting an original operatic work. The population of San Francisco itself is close to 40% Asian, so it’s long past the time when we should be surprised to attend a show based on arguably the most famous work of Chinese literature. We’re fully ready for a contemporary, American, multicultural canon, and this Chinese show is a natural addition.

To add to these, as a new opera, this project was by nature especially collaborative, just right for the recognizable thread of experimental performance characteristic of Northern California. In fact, eminent international director Stan Lai, whose work I have followed for many years, and whose sure hand was in evidence throughout, was even billed simply as the head of a “creative team” in some of the early promotional materials.

Already on press night, the various elements of the production had come together to form a lush, challenging web. The machinations of the 18th century court and its rivaling wealthy families weren’t immediately easy to follow, but always managed to be exciting and suspenseful anyway. The music by Bright Sheng was deliciously, extravagantly atonal, not perhaps the most obvious idiom for the period of the story, but with a forceful, timeless quality—one reviewer referred to Bartok and Stravinsky—that was perfect for bridging the classical with the modern. The same can be said of the traditional gongs and cymbals we heard with the Western orchestra. The costumes by Tim Yip were somehow both Chinese and not—opulent swirls of silk, elaborate headpieces, unexpected color combinations—but with occasional suggestions of dress from other cultures, real or imagined.

2.BigSet-cr

Photo - Cory Weaver / SF Opera.

The sets (also by Tim Yip) were often like paintings come alive, reminding me of video works I’ve seen in that vein at San Francisco’s always surprising Asian Museum. Images of a town that floated in from above broke apart and were rearranged; a garden enclosure glided onstage; various panels were smoothly wheeled on and off. Everything in motion, cinematic. The two ill -fated lovers wandered between stage-width layers of scrim, separated by and interconnected over vast, incomprehensible Time. This was a truly affecting stage image: we could see how close they were to each other, but they couldn’t, or only for an instant, fleetingly.

The opera was billed as a “love triangle,” but I saw a slightly different story: two matriarchs jockeying for position, one bent on marrying their Male Heir to a Rich Girl, the other to the Poor Girl he loves. There was no “love” of the heir (Bao Yu, sung by Yijie Shi) for his wealthy intended (Bao Chai, sung by Irene Roberts). In fact, in the performance I saw, the two-person scene between Bao Yu and Bao Chai served as comic relief. He had heard her praises sung, but when they were finally alone together, she right away started in on “changing” him: he should drink his liquids warm, not cold; he should have this kind of job, not that. The audience recognized a scold.

A more recent press angle describes the story as that of a young man who has to choose between Duty (marry the incompatible rich girl) and Love, and this seems to me closer to what I saw. Still, I wonder if people who knew the original novel (mostly by Cao Xueqin) had a certain advantage. For example, I was astonished when Irene Roberts took her curtain call before Hyona Kim, who played the matriarch trying to solve her financial woes by marrying Roberts’ character into her family. The way the opera is structured now, Kim had far more stage time and, with her complex portrayal and wondrous voice, was effectively the primary mover of the plot. But this version of Red Chamber is just one storyline extracted from an epic with hundreds of characters, and audience members familiar with the whole were apparently making a mental adjustment, adding weight to the role of the moneyed, daughter-in-law-to-be.

3.DaiYu-cr

Pureum Jo | Photo - Dong Xudong / Xinhua

Also requiring a viewer’s adjustment: the character of Dai Yu (Pureum Jo), the lovely, penniless cousin, was introduced as a sickly orphan with a romantic cough—but her illness proved phantom, and she went on to sing ear-bendingly, ferociously demanding music at magnificent volume. Of course, at the opera we know we might find, for example, the teenage Juliet sung by an improbably large, mature diva. But in this case, the matter of Dai Yu’s fragile health seemed critical to the story at the start, and then vanished.

Co-librettists Bright Sheng  and David Henry Hwang  had their work cut out for them, to satisfy aficionados of the most famous of Chinese novels, while keeping the story accessible to everyone else. In one of the advance video trailers, they both describe balking before agreeing to join the project. In any case, the libretto is the element of this opera that will most benefit from continued development. Firstly, the natural stress in the lines to be sung were almost always fighting with the accent in the musical phrase. This was very tiring to the ear. Secondly, the lines had the singers communicating in Chinese-inflected English, as if all the characters in the story sounded foreign-born to each other: a puzzling choice indeed. Still, a big part of the pleasure of seeing a new show is knowing it will continue to take shape. The new show you are watching now may well become a classic later.

4.Women-cr

Karen Chia-ling Ho, Qiulin Zhang, and Hyona Kim | Photo - Cory Weaver/SFOpera

The singers were, of course, awe-inspiring, venturing vocally into realms fraught with difficulties and never wavering. I often wish, at both the opera and the theatre, that there had been more time in rehearsal to bring all the performers under one roof, as it
were, so it weren’t quite so obvious that they all have widely different training. Here, too, we heard a range of techniques that were sometimes complementary and, at others, jarring. We can continue to dream of more consistency among performers of dramas both spoken and sung. In the meantime, many a sublime moment is achieved.

With this incarnation of Dream of the Red Chamber, San Francisco Opera and the creative collaborative artists have made a timely contribution to both our local and international communities.  

Post Your Comments
About This Article

Share This Page

View other readers’ comments in Letters to the Editor

Lissa Tyler Renaud - Scene4 Magazine www.scene4.com

Lissa Tyler Renaud, Ph.D. is director of InterArts Training (1985- ). She was co-editor of The Politics of American Actor Training (Routledge), and Editor of Critical Stages webjournal 2007-14. She has been visiting professor, master teacher, speaker and recitalist in the U.S., Asia, Europe, Russia, Mexico. She is a Senior Writer for Scene4
For her other commentary and articles, check the Archives.

©2016 Lissa Tyler Renaud
©2016 Publication Scene4 Magazine

 

 

Sc4-solo--logo62h

October 2016

Volume 17 Issue 5

SECTIONS:: Cover | This Issue | inView | inFocus | inSight | Perspectives | Special Issues | Blogs COLUMNS:: Bettencourt | Meiselman | Thomas | Jones | Marcott | Walsh | Alenier | :::::::::::: INFORMATION:: Masthead | Subscribe | Submissions | Recent Issues | Your Support | Books CONNECTIONS:: Contact Us | Contacts&Links | Comments | Advertising | Privacy Terms | Archives

Search This Issue

|

Search The Archives

|

Share:

Email

fb  


Scene4 (ISSN 1932-3603), published monthly by Scene4 Magazine–International Magazine of Arts and Media. Copyright © 2000-2016 Aviar-Dka Ltd – Aviar Media Llc. All rights reserved. Now in our 17th year of publication with Worldwide Readership in 141 countries and comprehensive archives of over 9000 web pages (36,000 print pages).
 

Time-0716
Scientific American - www.scene4.com
Penguin Books-USA www.scene4.com
Character Flaws by Les Marcott at www.aviarpress.com
Thai Airways at Scene4 Magazine
HollywoodRed-1