MCLC: Tan Dun's Peony Pavilion (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: james shaw (jamesrk at shaw.ca)
Subject: Tan Dun's Peony Pavilion (1)
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Source: NYT (12/2/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/arts/music/the-peony-pavilion-abridged-at
-the-metropolitan-museum.html

MUSIC REVIEW
Sprawling Love Story, Abridged
‘The Peony Pavilion,’ Abridged, at the Metropolitan Museum
By JAMES R. OESTREICH

It was good to catch up with the career of the Chinese opera starZhang Jun
<http://travel.cnn.com/shanghai/life/man-who-brings-kungqu-opera-world-3198
01> over the weekend. When I last encountered him, in Shanghai in 1998,
Mr. Zhang, then 23 and also an aspiring pop singer, was rehearsing Liu
Mengmei, the male lead role in the classic Chinese opera “The Peony
Pavilion” for a production by Chen Shi-Zheng
<http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/c/chen_shizh
eng/index.html> with the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Company, which was intended
for the Lincoln Center Festival.

But the Shanghai Bureau of Culture objected to aspects of the production
and barred it from traveling to New York
<http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/07/arts/critic-s-notebook-right-perform-rig
ht-compose-loss-peony-players.html>. When Mr. Chen staged the production
<http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/13/arts/critic-s-notebook-the-peony-just-li
ke-the-phoenix-lives-anew.html> at the festival the next year, in all its
19-hour glory and with performers recruited from around China, the only
holdovers from the Shanghai company were the charismatic Qian Yi
<http://www.qianyiarts.com/pr_peony.html> as Du Liniang, the female lead,
and Zhou Ming, the superb flutist.

Mr. Zhang, in the meantime, continued to work with the Shanghai company,
founded the Shanghai Zhang Jun Kunqu Art Center in 2009 and was named a
Unesco Artist for Peace in 2011 for his work in propagating kunqu
(pronounced kun-CHU), the oldest and most refined form of Chinese opera.
From Friday through Sunday, Mr. Zhang was a star and co-director of a
production at the Metropolitan Museum billed as “Tan Dun’s Peony Pavilion.”

Part of the new concert series Met Museum Presents
<https://www.metmuseum.org/&>, which stresses ties to exhibitions, this
“Peony,” first presented near Shanghai in 2010, was an adjunct to “Chinese
Gardens: Pavilions, Studios, Retreats” (on view through Jan. 6), organized
by the curator Maxwell K. Hearn. The five performances took place in the
intimate Astor Court, a re-creation of a Chinese garden, and because the
seating was limited to some 50 viewers, the first performance, on Friday
evening, was relayed in high-definition video to the Grace Rainey Rogers
Auditorium.

In addition Mr. Hearn interviewed Tan Dun, the New York-based composer, in
the auditorium on Thursday evening and introduced Mr. Tan and the lead
performers there after the HD showing. The video is now available for
streaming <http://www.metmuseum.org/peonypavilion> on the Met’s Web site.

“The Peony Pavilion” was completed by Tang Xianzu in 1598, and comparisons
are often drawn between Tang and his close contemporary Shakespeare, and
between “Peony” and “Romeo and Juliet.” All well and good, but in terms of
sheer length and epic scope, “Peony” is closer to Wagner’s “Ring” cycle.
It places a modest but evocative romantic tale against a broad tapestry of
life — social, courtly and military — in the vibrant Song dynasty
(960-1276).

The 70-minute distillation produced by Mr. Zhang and Mr. Tan amounts to
little more than a tasting portion of the work, though a delectable one.
In 4 scenes (as against the original 55), it merely sketches the romantic
tale, shorn of subplots and the countless colorful and even zany
characters and incidents that teem from Tang’s imagination.

The susceptible Du encounters and falls for a young scholar, Liu, in a
dream. Awakened and bereft, she pines to her death, leaving behind a
self-portrait. The real-life Liu happens on the portrait and manages to
have Du restored to life (don’t ask) and to his affections. End of story.

Mr. Zhang, seen and heard in HD (with slightly shrill audio) on Friday and
in the court on Saturday afternoon, was every bit the compelling singer
and actor I remembered from Shanghai. He handled the constant shifts
between natural voice and falsetto, so much a part of the idiom, fluidly
and eloquently.

Zhang Ran (no relation) was a winning Du, an expressive actress with a
sweet if smallish voice (at least in comparison to Zhang Jun’s robust
one). Mr. Tan’s musical conception included electronics: not only voices
and sound effects piped in but also live manipulation of vocal lines that
was particularly noticeable in the extensions of Ms. Zhang’s arcing phrase
endings when Du was in ghost mode.

Mr. Tan also wove in transitions between set pieces and other background
material of an eclectic nature, ranging from rudimentary Western-style
polyphony to contemporary gestures. For the rest, the musical treatment
was spare, involving bamboo flute (the characteristic instrument of
kunqu), the zitherlike guqin and percussion.

In the discussion on Thursday, Mr. Tan dismissed the current tendency to
beef up orchestration in Chinese opera, calling his own approach
vegetarian. It was, in any case, mostly stately and elegant, in keeping
with Huang Doudou’s choreography, Wei Tao’s costumes and the production as
a whole.

Here’s hoping for more Chinese opera in the Met’s innovative new style of
multilayered presentation.